104 - 10534-10205
SECRET
THE MONSTER PLOT
Introduction ............... . 1
Chapter I Organizational Background: CIA's
Handling of Soviet Positive Intelli¬
gence and Cl Matters .. . 3
Chapter 11 Biographical Data: 1927-1962 .. 7
Chapter III Chronicle: 1962-1969 . . 12
A. Initial Contacts .......... 12
B. Bona Fides .. 13
C. The Case Against Nosenko ...... 16
D. Defection .. 18
E. The Problem of Disposition ..... 27
F. Erratic Behavior and Its Aftermath . 28
G. The Decision to Incarcerate ..... 31
H. First Polygraph Examination ..... 32
I. Incarceration and Interrogation ... 36
J. Elaboration of the Plot Theory ... 41
K. Life in a Vault .. 43
L. Inter-Agency Disagreement . 65
M. Voices of Dissent . . . . . . . . . . 67
N. Helms Takes Control . 73
1 '1-00000
SECRET
- ii-
O. Resolution of the Case. 76
Chapter IV Nosenko*s Contribution: A Summary
Evaluation. 81
A. Information on KGB Personnel .... 81
B. KGB Recruitment Efforts Against
US Citizens. 82
C. Moscow Microphones. 84
P. William John Christopher Vassall . . 84
E. Leads to Foreign Nationals ..... 85
F. Summary Evaluation . . . .. 85
Chapter V. The Analytical Foundations of the
"Monster Plot” . ..... 86
A. Lack of Systematic Interrogation . . 86
B. Faulty Record of Conversations
With Nosenko. 90
C. CIA Misapprehensions Regarding
Nosenko*s Life Story ........ 93
D. Errors or Omissions in Available
CIA Headquarters Records . 100
E. CIA Assumptions about the Second
Chief Directorate. 101
F. The A Priori Assumption of
Disinformation as Applied to
the Popov and Related Cases ..... 106
Chapter VI Dezinformatsiya : Origins of the Concept
and Application in the Nosenko Case . . . 113
Chapter VII Golitsyn Vs. Nosenko: A Comparison of
Their Handling By CIA .. 123
] '1-00000
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
-iii-
Use of the Polygraph in the Nosenko
Case..
136
Psychological and Medical Findings . . .
A. The Role of the Psychologist .
B. The Role of the Psychiatrist . . . .
C. Conclusions ........
142
142
149
157
Impact of the "Monster Plot" on CIA’s
Positive Intelligence and Cl Missions
A. The Case of " »
« ******
B. Effect on Other Potential Opera-
.tions ....... .......
C. How CIA Worked to Defeat Itself .
Methodology and Leadership ..
A. Lack of Counterintelligence
Methodology ......
B. Influence of Chief, Cl on
Methodology .
C. Impact of Faulty Counterintelli¬
gence on Positive Intelligence
Collection . .......
D. What Went Wrong? .
E. Summary ... . .
159
159
173
175
177
177
178
178
179
181
Conclusions and Recommendations . . . . . 182
A. The Letter of Instructions.• ±S2
B. Recommended Action.. 1 cm
SECRET
!
Introduction
On 5 June 1962 Yuriy Ivanovich Nosenko, a Soviet official
temporarily assigned to Geneva, contacted an American Foreign
Service Officer in a move that was eventually to lead to
Nosenko' s defection. This act was the first in a chain of
events that is unequaled in complexity by any other Soviet
operation handled by the Central Intelligence Agency since
its establishment. Because the case still has important
implications for the overall Soviet intelligence effort of
the United States, and because it raises many basic questions
about the techniques of handling Soviet agents and defectors ,
a re investigation of the case was commissioned by the Agency
in June 19761 The results are embodied in this report and
its annexes.
Although United States officials of many agencies, up
to and including a president of the United States, were briefed
on the case and either played some role in making decisions
concerning it or actively participated in running the opera¬
tion, it does not now appear that, between 1962 and 1976, any
single individual has ever been fully informed as to all its
aspects. The complexity of this investigation therefore
stems in large measure from the fact that the case has pro¬
ceeded along at least two, and often more, compartmented
tracks. Thus, the effort to get a total picture of what
transpired has involved an unusual amount of research in the
files of various components of the Agency, plus personal in¬
terviews with a large number of present and former Agency
employees.
The actions taken in regard to Nosenko were not the
result of decisions made by a unitary Agency acting as a
corporate entity; rather, in this case more than in most,
decisions were made by a number of senior individuals on the
basis of their own strongly-held views, which sometimes con¬
flicted with the equally strongly-held opinions of other
senior colleagues. Thus, this report must, if it is to be
comprehensible, attempt to depict the decision-making process
in all its complexity by referring when necessary to the
individual participants .
The quintessential quality of a report such as this
is that it be objective. We have not, on the other hand,
refrained from expressing our opinions. Even to have tried
to do so would have been futile for two rather obvious
reasons. First, into the reconstruction of events of the
complexity herein described there always enters a degree
of selectivity and judgment; in this sense, "opinion" pro¬
vides the essential matrix of our product. Secondly, we
have viewed our task as one of constructive criticism.
CHAPTER I
Organizational Background: CIA* s Handling
Of Soviet Positive Intelligence and Cl Matters
The history of the Nosenko case can only be comprehended
within, the framework of the organization and day-to-day func¬
tioning of the Central Intelligence Agency as a whole. In
fact, opinions regarding the handling of the Nosenko case may
differ substantially according to individual’s differing
views regarding internal Agency organization and functioning.
This being the case, it is useful at the outset to make
explicit our understanding of how the Agency actually func¬
tioned in the relevant period, the 1960s, as distinct from
how it might theoretically have functioned according to
Agency organizational charts and regulations.
The two instrumentalities for the conduct of day-to-day
operations in the Soviet field were the Soviet Bloc Division
(known successively by this and several other names*) and
the Counterintelligence Staff. In the nature and interrela¬
tionship of these two organizations we find the key to much
of what was to happen in the Nosenko case.
Although the SB Division was considered a ’’line" organi¬
zation , the Cl Staff's name would imply (if the Agency's
formal organization were to be taken at face value) that its
function was limited to advising a command echelon. In fact,
such a distinction was never enforced.
"Cl Staff" was actually a misnomer, because the organi¬
zation carrying this name did not even concern itself to any
appreciable extent with the counterintelligence function of
the Agency on a worldwide basis. Rather, it concentrated on
the USSR and Soviet Bloc countries.
Within the SB Division, there was lodged the so-called
Soviet Cl Group, which was in many respects a competitor of
the Cl Staff. It concerned itself, during most of the
period to be covered in this report, primarily with information
*This area component during the period of this report was
known as Soviet Russia Division (1952-1966) and.Soviet Bloc
Division (1966-1974). The two names are often used inter¬
changeably.
on the intelligence and counterintelligence organs of the
USSR, and as such was inevitably somewhat redundant, since
the same field was the major preoccupation of the Cl Staff.
Nevertheless, as will emerge later in this report, there
was during most of the period with which we are concerned a
substantial congruity of views between the SB/CI Group and
Cl Staff that militated in favor of coherent operational
policy, even though the two organizations might disagree on
matters of detail.
One curious aspect of the organizational problem should
be mentioned at this point because, while seemingly minor,
it may have played a significant role. While the SB Division
understandably, had a number of competent Russian linguists,
the Cl Staff did not have a single Russian linguist who could
be brought to bear on either the Nosenko or Golitsyn case.
The staff was therefore dependent for its data on translations
of Nosenko material and, in the case of Golitsyn, on informa¬
tion obtained from discussions conducted with him in English,
a language in which he was not fully fluent.
A third organizational participant in the Nosenko case
was the Office of Security. This office had overlapping
jurisdiction with Cl Staff and, to a lesser extent, SB Division
in any matter that involved a suspected Soviet or Soviet Bloc
penetration of the Agency. While not usually a problem, the
overlapping jurisdiction was considerable in both the
Golitsyn and Nosenko cases because so much of the activity
in connection with both operations revolved around allegations
that the Soviets had penetrated the Agency at a high level.
Although allegations that the Soviets had recruited
Agency staff employees did not first originate with Golitsyn,
it was he who lent special force to them by, spelling out a
complicated theory of Soviet intentions and modus operand! .
He thus provided a detailed conceptual framework within which
to develop a hypothesis towards which some members of the
Agency were already predisposed. Golitsyn thus became the
ideologue* s ideologue.
Prior to Golitsyn's defection, the Agency as a whole had
been hard hit by its dealings with high-level Soviet penetra¬
tions of Wes tern governments. There is no need to go into
detail on them, since they have been well documented else¬
where , but they included British representatives such as
Kim Philby and George Blake. Another important penetration
was Heinz Felfe, who rose to be Deputy Chief of Soviet
Counterintelligence in the Bundesnachrichtendienst (END).
The Felfe case is particularly significant because it was
believed by a number of counterintelligence specialists in
the Agency that Felfe's career had been systematically pro¬
moted by .the Soviets through what came to be known as the
"throw-away” technique. According to the theory of this
group, a considerable number of valuable and productive
Soviet intelligence operations in Germany were made avail¬
able to Felfe so that, by detecting them and signaling their
presence to the West German authorities, he could build up
his reputation as a counterintelligence specialist. While
there is debate about the value of the assets the Soviets
made available, there appears to be enough substance to this
theory for it .to have had a strong impact within the Agency,
particularly upon those persons who were members of the forme
Eastern European (EE) Division of the Plans Directorate.
In the course of time, the continuing record of KGB
success in penetrating Western governments made it the more
feared of the two principal Soviet intelligence services.
Although we had had our successes also in penetrating the
Soviets, they were primarily through GRU defectors-in-place
such as Popov and Penkovskiy. The defection of Anatoliy
Golitsyn on 15 December 1961 was thus a major event.
Once again, it is not necessary here to go into details
regarding Golitsyn, because this case has been covered exten¬
sively in a recent study. However, two points are worth
noting:
1. First, Golitsyn was diagnosed early in
1962 as a "paranoid personality." Although account
was taken of this psychological problem, it was
considered in the light of a threat to the con¬
tinuity of the debriefing process rather than as
a factor reflecting on the validity of the purported
intelligence he gave us. It was apparently felt
that, if we could maintain his stability, we could
depend not only upon the obj ectively verifiable
facts he gave us but also upon his often very
theoretical generalizations.
2. Secondly, Golitsyn presented us right from
the beginning, continually elaborated throughout
the years , a complicated rationale for believing
that the KGB was successfully pursuing a mammoth
program of "disinformation" to the detriment of the
United States and its Western allies. This ratio¬
nale is covered in more detail in Chapter VI of
this report.
It is against this background that we view the approach
to CIA by Nosenko and his subsequent handling. In doing so,
we shall for ease of reference from time to time allude to
the thesis regarding KGB operations and intentions--elaborated
by Golitsyn and others--as the "Monster Plot." In fairness,
it must be allowed that this term was in common usage not
by the thesis’ proponents but rather by its detractors; yet
no other name serves so aptly to capsulize what the theorizers
envisaged as a major threat to United States’ security. If
the term carries with it emotive connotations, the latter
were certainly shared by both sides to the controversy; and
this fact alone is enough to justify including "Monster Plot”
in the lexicon of this study.
-00000
SEC,IT
-7-
CHAPTER II
Biographical Data: 1927-1962
Yuriy Ivanovich Nosenko was born 30 October 1927 in
Nikolayev, Ukrainian SSR, son of Ivan Isidorovich Nosenko
and Tamara Georgiyevna Markovskaya. His father was born in
1902 and died on 2 August 1956. At the time of his death,
the senior Nosenko was Minister of Shipbuilding, a member
of the Central Committee of the CPSU, a deputy to the Supreme
Soviet of the USSR, and recipient of a number of the highest
Soviet awards and medals. He received a state funeral, and
he is commemorated by a plaque on the Kremlin wall. Young
Nosenko's brother, Vladimir, born in 1944, was a student at
the Institute of International Relations as of 1964.
From his birth until 1934, Nosenko lived in Nikolayev.
In 1934 he and his mother j oined the senior Nosenko in
Leningrad, where the latter was working as chief engineer
at the Sudomekh shipbuilding plant. Nosenko continued his
schooling- in Leningrad until late 1938, at which time he
and his mother followed the senior Nosenko to Moscow, where
he was to serve as Deputy People's Commissar of the Ship¬
building Industry.
In 1941, shortly after the war broke out, Nosenko and
his mother were evacuated to Chelyabinsk in the Urals.
Nosenko stated that he and a friend tried to run off to the
front, but they were caught and returned home. At age 14
Nosenko entered a Special Naval School that, in August
1942, was relocated to Kuybyshev. Later, this school was
forced to relocate again, this time to Achinsk in Siberia.
Nosenko did not want to go to Siberia and, through the in¬
fluence of his father, was accepted at the Frunze Naval
Preparatory School in Leningrad ( not to*be confused with
the Frunze Higher Naval School, also in Leningrad), which
by this time had been relocated to Baku.
Some time after August 1943, Nosenko tried on two
separate occasions to get to the front, but failed. He
and a friend did succeed in returning home to Moscow with¬
out authorization. These escapades seem to form part of a
behavior pattern that was eventually to culminate in defec¬
tion.
By August 1944, Nosenko had resumed his studies at the
Frunze Naval Preparatory School, which had returned to its
SECRET
original location in Leningrad. Cadets from this school were
sent to a forest (some two hundred kilometers from Leningrad)
on a wood-cutting detail. In about November of that year he
wounded himself, seemingly accidentally, and was hospitalized.
He decided not to return to the Frunze Naval Preparatory
School and again, through his father's intervention in about
January 1945, entered a shipbuilding college ( tekhnikum ) in
Leningrad.
At the end of World War II, Nosenko returned to Moscow.
He had meanwhile obtained a certificate from the director of
the shipbuilding college that attested to his study in, and
the completion of, the tenth class.
At some time prior to July 1945, Nosenko accompanied his
father, who went to East Germany with a group of engineers.
For purposes of that trip, Nosenko received temporary rank
as an Army senior lieutenant, with appropriate documents and
uniform.
Nosenko entered the Institute of International Relations
in Moscow in July 1945. Upon completion of the second year
at the Institute, and by virtue of his participation in a
military training program roughly equivalent to the ROTC,
Nosenko received the rank of junior lieutenant in the
"administrative service" (sic). (The exact meaning of this
term is unclear.)
In 1946, according to Nosenko, he married, against his
parents' wishes, a student whom he had gotten pregnant. He
obtained a divorce almost immediately following their marriage.
In about 1947, he married the daughter of Soviet Lieutenant
General (Major General, US-style) Telegin. This marriage,
too, was neither successful nor long-lived. Nosenko reported
he had found his wife in bed with her byother. A girl was
later born with a harelip and a cleft palate. Nosenko in¬
sisted that this was not his child.
Nosenko completed a four-year course at the Institute
of International Relations, but he actually received his
diploma a year later, in 1950, because he had failed the
examination in Marxism. He had had to wait an extra year in
order to retake this examination.
In March 1951, Nosenko was assigned as an English
language translator in naval intelligence (Naval RU),
serving first in the Far East. While on leave in Moscow
SECRET
-9-
(late April 1952) , he developed an illness that caused him
to cough up blood, and he entered a tuberculosis sanatorium
near Moscow for treatment. For reasons of health, he did
not return to the Far East but was sent instead to the
Baltic area.
While on leave in Moscow in late 1952, Nosenko accompanied
his parents to a New Year's Eve party at the dacha of a
certain General Bogdan Zakharovich Kobulov. When Nosenko
indicated interest in changing jobs, the general made a vague
offer of help in getting employment with the Ministry of State
Security (MGB). In March 1953, while again in Moscow, Nosenko
was called to Kobulov’s office. Kobulov had just returned
from Germany to become the First Deputy Minister of the MVD
(Ministry of Internal Affairs). Nosenko did not see Kobulov
personally but was referred by the latter’s assistant to the
deputy chief of the Second Chief Directorate (internal coun¬
terintelligence) , hereafter referred to as SCD, by whom he
was hired.
His first MGB assignment was in the First (American
embassy) Section of the First (American) Department of the
SCD.
In March 1953, following Stalin’s death, Lavrentiy
Beriya emerged from the resultant reshuffling of the top
leadership as chief of both the MVD and MGB. In March 1954,
the new "Committee" for State Security--the KGB--was formed.
In June 1953 Nosenko married his third wife, Lyudmila
Yulianovna Khozhevnikova, who was a student at the Moscow
State University.
Nosenko, a member of the Komsomol since 1943, was
elected secretary of the SCD Komsomol unit in June 1953 and
served as secretary of that unit until about June 1954.
However, earlier in 1954, Nosenko had contracted venereal
disease and gone to a clinic; to disguise his identity, he
used operational documentation in alias in applying for
treatment. When he did not go back for final treatment
as instructed, the clinic sent a letter to his ostensible
place of work as shown on the alias document. The MVD found
out about this improper use of alias documentation and re¬
ported it to the SCD. Nosenko was not only disciplined
by the chief, SCD (reprimanded and placed under arrest for
15 days), but the Komsomol also removed him as secretary
and expelled him from its organization.
In early spring 1955 , Nosenko received a poor
kharakteristika (performance evaluation), which described
him as unsuitable for work in the First Department. None¬
theless, he was neither dismissed nor transferred.
Although Nosenko survived the 1954 episode as well as
the poor performance report, these events caused him to go
on what he has described as a "big drunk," which resulted
in his having to spend a month under hospital care. To
keep Nosenko out of further trouble, his mother intervened
by making a telephone call to Petr Vasilyevich Fedotov,
chief of the SCD. Seemingly as a result of her efforts,
Nosenko was transferred in the latter part of May 1955 to
the Second Section (which operated against tourists) of
the Seventh Department, SCD. In late 1955, Lieutenant
General Oleg Mikhaylovich Gribanov was appointed chief of
the SCD. From a number of indications, Nosenko's relation¬
ship with Gribanov developed, despite the difference in rank
and position, into a social relationship involving evenings
on the town together, heavy drinking, and women. Despite
numerous indiscretions, Nosenko's survival within the KGB
and his subsequent promotions to increasingly responsible
posit ions may well have resulted in part from Gribanov's
patronage. To a considerable degree, of course, his rise
must also be attributed to his being the son of a highly-
placed member of the Soviet government.
At this point in his KGB career, Nosenko had lost his
Komsomol membership and not achieved CP-member status. It
was not until 1956 that he was accepted as a candidate mem¬
ber of the CP, and only in 1957 that he was admitted as a
full Party member. Once this happened, according to Nosenko,
the Komsomol removed its reprimand from his file.
In December 1959, Nosenko was promoted to the rank of
captain. He held this rank until his defection in February
1964, despite having been promised he would be promoted and
the fact that he had held several positions that were
usually filled by officers of higher military rank.
Nosenko worked in the Seventh Department, SCD until
January 1960, when he was transferred back to the First
Section (American embassy) of the First Department. Then
he held the position of a deputy chief of the First Section.
He was retransferred back to the Seventh Department as of
late December 1961-early January 1962. In July 1962, he
was appointed deputy chief of the Seventh Department. He
i '1-00000
SECRET
continued in this position until 18 January 1964, the date
he left Moscow on TDY to Geneva.
Nosenko defected in Geneva on 4 February 1964, leaving
behind in Moscow his wife, Lyudmila, and two daughters.
His prior travels to the West had included two TDYs to
England in 1957 and 1958, a TDY to Cuba in 1960, and the
first TDY to Geneva from mid-March until June 1962. He
also went on TDY to Bulgaria in 1961. Details of his de¬
fection and subsequent developments are covered in Chapter
SECRET
- 12 -
CHAPTER III
Chronicle: 1962-1969
Initial Contacts
When Nosenko first approached the CIA on 9 June
1962, he had been assigned, as a representative of the
KGB Second Chief Directorate, to be security officer of
the Soviet delegation to the Disarmament Conference
being held in the Palais des Nations in Geneva. Taking
advantage of the fact that he was the watchdog for the
delegation’ whereas its members could not watch him,
Nosenko used his freedom of movement to approach the
Agency, ostensibly for personal financial assistance.
As he told it, Nosenko had recently slept with a
Swiss woman who had stolen 900 Swiss Francs of official
funds that he had on his person at the time; inability
to reimburse this relatively trivial amount (about US
$250 at the time) would j eopardize his career. In ex¬
change for 2,000 Swiss Francs, he therefore proposed
that he provide us with two items of information.
These items, subsequently verified, related to :
1. KGB recruitment of a US Army sergeant
while he was serving in the American embassy
in Moscow as a "code machine repairman."
2. A Soviet official whom the Agency
had ostensibly recruited but who was being
run against us under KGB control.
At this time Nosenko was not forthcoming in response
to general intelligence requirements on which we tried to
quiz him, excluded the possibility of becoming an agent,
and flatly refused to consider meeting Agency representa¬
tives inside the USSR. Nevertheless, he "agreed ’perhaps
meet us when abroad" again at a later date. For our part
our interest in him was whetted by his identification of
his deceased father as a former minister of the USSR.
In addition, such information as he gave about himself
indicated that he would be of high operational interest.
Inter alia his most recent assignment in Moscow was as
head of a KGB sub-section working against American
touris ts.
'1-00000
SECRET
-13-
B. Bona Fides
By 11 June, the two case officers (one a native
Russian speaker) who were handling Nosenko sent a
cable to Headquarters that read in part:
SUBJ CONCLUSIVELY PROVED BONA FIDES. PRO¬
VIDED INFO OF IMPORTANCE AND SENSITIVITY,
SUBJ NOW COMPLETELY COOPERATIVE. WILLING
MEET WHEN ABROAD AND WILL MEET AS OFTEN AND
AS LONG AS POSSIBLE UNTIL DEPARTURE 15 JUNE.
With the question of bona fides seemingly resolved,
the principal case officer flew to Washington carrying
the tapes of the meeting. His arrival and sojourn at
Headquarters were described by Chief, Cl on 23 July 1976
as follows:
Chief, Cl: ... we got the first message . . . on
Nosenko from Geneva, and [the principal
case officer] was ordered back, and we
had a big meeting here on Saturday morning,
and [the principal case officer] thought
he had the biggest fish of his life. I
mean he really did . . . and everything I
heard from him was in direct contrast from
what we heard from Golitsyn. I mean, we
had no agents, this, that and . . . yet
here was a Second Chief Directorate man
in Geneva peace talks on disarmament.
So I got hold of [the principal case of¬
ficer], and I brought him in here on a
weekend.
Q: What you* re saying is that it was unreason¬
able for a Second Chief'Directorate man to
be there ...
Chief, Cl: Under the circumstances, getting drunk and
needing $300 to . . . "not to be recruited
but to give us three full, big secrets"
for an exchange for the money in order
that he could replenish the account from
which he embezzled the money on a drunk.
So I brought [the principal case.officer]
in here one evening, I think it was Friday,
Saturday and a Sunday, and I brought about
10 to 15 volumes of Golitsyn's interroga¬
tion, without prejudicing him in any way,
just to read it, and he had all the
books out, and at the end of it all he
said that there was no question about it,
that they were being had. I mean, mind
you, he was of split motivation because
this was the big case of his entire life
and yet there he was reading material,
etc. So we went to Dick [Helms, then
DDP] and we put up a proposition that we
should permit Golitsyn to read the real
material, I mean the transcripts and
• everything from Nosenko. And he wouldn't
agree to that, but we made a compromise
and that was to take the material and
falsify it as though it was an anonymous
letter sent to the embassy by an alleged
KGB person. So the anonymous letter was
drawn up, and [the principal case officer]
interviewed Golitsyn with the anonymous
letter, and Golitsyn's statement was that
"this is a person under control, I want
to see the letter" which created a situa¬
tion because we didn't have a letter.
But he began to point out in some detail
exactly what was instigating and inspiring--
in terms of what he'd already given to us
and he very wisely stated that he wanted
everything on tape, because he knew that
as time passed in hundreds of interviews
and their counteraction took place, there
would be people accusing him of not having
divulged certain information.
The principal case officer's review of the Golitsyn
information had indeed converted him to the view that
Nosenko's defection was bogus. Equally convinced, as
clearly indicated by a number of doeuments that he
drafted, was his superior, the person who had become
Chief, SR Division in December 1963. The reasons for
Chief, SR's conviction may not have been the same as
the principal case officer's, but for all practical pur¬
poses the views of the two men at the time were identical.
A joint Cl Staff-SR Division recommendation was
therefore made to Richard Helms, the Deputy for Plans,
that the transcripts of the Nosenko debriefings be
made available to Golitsyn for comment. Helms agreed,
with the single reservation that Nosenko not be identi¬
fied by name as the source. As a result, a number of
items of information from Nosenko were embodied on a
letter ostensibly stemming from an anonymous KGB source
in this form, it was assumed, the information could be
shown to Golitsyn without disclosing the source. (This
ruse seemed plausible enough, since a previous defector
Michal Goleniewski, had written CIA a number of anony¬
mous letters before eventually defecting and disclosing
his identity.)
In carrying out the plan, the principal case offi¬
cer made his own views clear to Golitsyn:
I told [Golitsyn] that .■ . . I thought it quite
possible, in view of his own statements about
disinformation, that this was the beginning of
a disinformation operation possibly relating to
[his] defection.
Golitsyn felt, in general and without having
the full details necessary to an assessment,
that there were indeed serious signs of disin¬
formation in this affair. He felt such a dis¬
information operation, to discredit him, was a
likelihood, as he had earlier said. A KGB of¬
ficer could be permitted to tell everything he
knew, now, if he worked in the same general
field as Golitsyn had. When told that so far
this source had not done anything to discredit
Golitsyn, and had in fact reported that the KGB
is greatly upset about Golitsyn's defection,
and asked what he thought the purposes of such
a disinformation operation now might be,
Golitsyn agreed that kidnapping was a likely
one, "to arrange an exchange - for me." Also,
to divert our attention from investigations
of his leads by throwing up false scents, and
to protect their remaining sources. He also
added, "There could be other aims as well. The
matter should be looked into. It seems serious
to me." He thought the KGB might allow a first
series of direct meetings with the KGB officer,
to build up our confidence, and then in the
next session do whatever the operation's purpose
'1-00000
SEC1ET
- 16 -
might be (discredit Golitsyn, kidnap, pass
serious disinformation items, etc.).
C. The Case Against Nosenko
During the remainder of 1962 and 1963, SR Division
continued to build up a case against Nosenko. Virtually
any information provided by Nosenko, or action taken by
him, was interpreted as part of a KGB "provocation."
If his information was in accord with that from other
sources, this fact not only confirmed our suspicion of
Nosenko but was interpreted as casting doubt on the
other sources as well.
While the above aspect will be covered at length
in Chapters V and VI, one example will serve to highlight
the attitude that prevailed. Nosenko had, during our
meetings with him in 1962 , contributed information that
materially aided in the identification and arrest of
William John Christopher Vassall, a British Admiralty
official who was also a KGB agent. Because Golitsyn
had previously provided similar, but less specific,
information, the usefulness of Nosenko's intelligence
was discounted; once Vassall had been identified, it
was concluded that Nosenko had been allowed to expose
him in order to support his own bona fides . The argu¬
ment ran that Vassall would in any case have been identi¬
fied sooner or later on the basis of Golitsyn's leads.
In January 1964, Nosenko reappeared in Geneva ac¬
companying another Soviet delegation. By now, the case
against him had been well established in the minds of
those dealing with the matter, and the record is there¬
fore replete with manifestations of suspicion. A particu
lar example of our tendency to interpret unfavorably al¬
most anything Nosenko said is provided by notes that
Chief, SR forwarded to Helms on 27 January 1964, with
the suggestion that they "convey very well the flavor
of the man . . . and the complexities of the operation."
By way of background, although Nosenko' s cryptonym at
this juncture was AEFOXTROT, he had previously been
designated AEBARMAN. This bit of history led to the
following incident during a safehouse meeting:
I cannot attribute to coincidence a bizarre remark
AEFOXTROT made on 24 January. As I went
SECRET
14-00000
SECRET
-17-
behind a bar which stands in the apartment,
to serve drinks to AEFOXTROT . . . AEFOXTROT
saw me standing there behind the bar and his
face lit up and he said with a smile, "Ha.
You are the barman." Now this could be an
idle pleasantry about my standing there like
a bartender, but it is not funny as AEFOXTROT
(ex-AEBARMAN) seemed to think it was and I
am afraid it means that he knows his own CIA
cryptonym.
The above incident exemplifies a main theme that CIA
was itself penetrated. This fear had existed before
Golitsyn defected, but it was fed constantly by the lat¬
ter* s allegations that information concerning him was
leaking to the KGB, and the conclusion that the leaks
must have originated within the Agency.
Thus it was that a memorandum from Chief, SR on 27
January 1964, submitted to and approved by Helms, began
as follows:
Our goal in this case must be eventually to
break Subj ect and learn from him the details
of his mission and its relation to possible
penetrations of US intelligence and security
agencies and those of allied nations as well
as to broader disinformation operations in
the political sphere. Ideally, our interests
would be best served if Subject were broken
as early as possible but since this is
unlikely, our actions must be conceived and
carried out in a manner which contributes to
our basic goal without alerting Subject unduly
at any stage.
Far from "alerting Subj ect unduly," on the surface
the Agency welcomed Nosenko with both cordiality and
generosity. The following excerpts from a 30 January
1964 meeting make the point clearly:
Nosenko: . . . the only thing I wanted to know and
I asked this question, "What should I ex¬
pect in the future?*'
Principal case officer:
The following awaits: As I presented it,
you wanted to come to the United States and
SECRET
-18-
have some job, some chance of a future
life, which gives you security and if
possible the opportunity to work in this
field which you know. Is that correct?
Nosenko: Absolutely.
Principal case officer:
Mr. Helms said yes, flatly absolutely yes,
in fact I would say enthusiastic . . .
that's the only word to describe it. We
talked about, and since this was a business
discuss ion I'11 repeat all of it whether
it was pleasant or unpleasant. So the next
thing will be some details that we spoke
. about. We talked about the means by which
[you] could have a solid career with a
certain personal independence. Because of
the very great assistance you've been to us
already and because of this desire to give
you a backing, they will give you a little
additional personal security . . . [salary
details follow].
Defection
As might be expected, the principal case officer
devoted a good deal of effort during the second Geneva
visit to persuading Nosenko to stay in place. Nosenko,
however, dismissed out of hand the possibility of remain¬
ing in contact with CIA from within the Soviet Union,
and he became increasingly anxious to defect immediately.
When the principal case officer continued to press him
to remain in Geneva long enough to effect an audio pene¬
tration of the local rezidentura , Nosenko forced the
issue. At a meeting on 4 February, he announced that a
cable had been received from Moscow ordering him back
home for a "tourism conference." Though this claim was
subsequently to be the source of almost endless contro¬
versy , it was accepted at the time without apparent
question. Preparations therefore immediately began for
evacuation to the United States.
A layover in another country en route to the United
States lasted about a fortnight. It was used for further
debriefing and assessment, but, while useful from the
operational handlers* standpoint, the delay raised
problems as their charge became impatient:
CAN EASILY CONTINUE DEBRIEFING FOR ANOTHER FEW
DAYS ALONG ABOVE LINES. SUBJ IS CARRYING MANY
NOTES OUTLINING DETAILS ALL SCD OPS KNOWN TO
HIM WHICH HE WANTS TO CARRY PERSONALLY AND
PRESENT TO HEADQUARTERS IN ORDER TO AVOID
ARRIVING WITH EMPTY HANDS. WORKING ON THIS
MATERIAL WILL OCCUPY US PROFITABLY BUT SUBJ
NEEDS SOONEST SOME EXPRESSION OF HEADQUARTERS
REACTIONS AND PLANS FOR ONWARD MOVEMENT. HIS
VIEW OF CURRENT SITUATION IS THAT IT IS
NECESSARY TRANSITION. HE WILL NOT UNDERSTAND
INDEFINITE DELAY. REMEMBER THAT SUBJ HAS JUST
MADE AN ENORMOUS DECISION AND FACED A TURNING
POINT IN HIS LIFE. SIMPLY TO MOVE THE LOCALE
TO ANOTHER COUNTRY AND SIT WITH THE SAME CASE
OFFICERS FULL TIME IN A SAFEHOUSE IS HARDLY
WHAT HE EXPECTS. REQUEST URGENTLY THAT HEAD¬
QUARTERS PROVIDE SOME RECOGNITION TO SUBJ.
AMONG ALTERNATIVES WE CAN SUGGEST ARE: •
A. [CHIEF, SR] TRIP WITH ONE OR TWO DAYS DIS¬
CUSSION OF LONG RANGE OPS PLANS AND AD¬
MINISTRATIVE PREPARATIONS FOR ONWARD
MOVE . . .
The above cable triggered a visit by Chief, SR.
Nothing that happened during this visit modified his al¬
ready well-formed views. After a conference with the two
principal handlers he wrote:
Both . . . were unanimous in their view that
Subject was not a genuine defector. His
contact with us in Geneva and subsequent
defection were, according to these officers,
clearly undertaken at the direction of the KGB.
I was particularly interested in [one officer’s]
statement that he had suspected Subject from
the very first meeting on the basis of Subject * s
emotionless and mechanical delivery of his
statement announcing his intention to defect.
After my talks with the case officers, I had
my first visit with Subject at the safehouse.
This lasted from 2000 to 2230 and included
dinner with Subj ect and the case officers.
Conversation during this first meeting was
general in nature and followed no special
agenda. . However, it did give me an oppor¬
tunity to take Subject's measure. I started
by telling Subject that I had come to form my
own impressions of him as a person and an
intelligence officer who desired to place his
knowledge and experience at the disposal of
the United States government. I added that
I wished to determine for myself why Sub j ect
had come to the West, a most serious step
which- neither we nor Subject should under-
■ estimate in terms of its lasting effect on
Subj ect's own life and those of his family
left behind. Subject rose to this opening by
first assuring me in a most fawning manner
that he, as an intelligence officer, fully
understood the need for a senior officer to
make his own judgments on the spot. He then
Went on to explain his motivation for first
contacting us, his reasons for defecting and
his intense desire to collaborate with us in
Soviet operations since he has no specialty
other than intelligence. These remarks were
repetitious of his original statements
delivered in the same mechanical fashion, the
maj or difference being that Subj ect was intensely
nervous at the outset, calming down only after
it appeared that I was accepting his statements
at face value.
By the end of the evening I had come to the
same conclusions reached by [the principal
handlers]. The totality of our conclusions
are treated in detail in a separate memorandum.
However, in reaching them, I was beset by a
sense of irritation at the KGB’s obvious con¬
viction they could pull off an operation like
this successfully and by a feeling of distaste
for the obvious and transparent manner in which
Subj ect played his role.
Chief, SR's distaste was sufficient to overcome any
interest he might otherwise have had in a recruitment
opportunity suggested by Nosenko:
I
- 21 -
One other subject touched upon . . . was the
possible recruitment of Vladimir Suslov, Under¬
secretary in the UN Secretariat and top-ranking
Soviet in the UN organization . . . Subject
[described] Suslov as a playboy who liked liquor
and women and who could be easily blackmailed
into cooperation for fear of hurting his career
in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I objected
to the blackmail angle saying that it could
cause a tremendous political flap if it back¬
fired. Undaunted, Subject modified his position
to assure us that it would not have to be ’’crude
blackmail” in which we would have to get
directly involved. I certainly got the impres¬
sion that Suslov’s recruitment is part of the
plan and that we would succeed no matter how
half-heartedly we tried.
Despite his misgivings, however, Chief, SR remained
convinced that the Agency must continue to dissemble:
It will be necessary to maintain an effective
degree of secrecy with regard to our knowledge
of Subj ect* s true status and our plans to try
to secure from him a full confession. If
Subj ect, or the Soviets, become aware of our
intentions, we will probably be forced to act
prematurely.
With these considerations in mind, he therefore re¬
newed the commitments previously made by the principal
case officer:
I informed Subj ect that I was satisfied that he
was genuine. Based on this and assuming his
continuing "cooperationI said we would pro¬
ceed to make arrangements to bring him to the
States. Second, I confirmed our agreement to
pay him . . . [financial details follow].
On 12 February, consistent with the above commitments,
Nosenko was flown to the Washington area and lodged in a
safehouse, under close supervision of the Office of
Security. Now that he was in the United States, the
Agency (and the US government as a whole) found them¬
selves faced with a seeming dilemma, much more crucial
than the problems facing them while he remained abroad.
The Agency* s perception of the dilemma, and the possibl
solutions to it, are covered in paragraphs 3, 4, 6 and
7 of a memorandum written by Chief, SR and approved by
Helms on 17 February 1964:
While admitting that Subject is here on a KGB
directed mission, it has been generally agreed
by both us and the FBI that he still possesses
valid information which we would like to obtain.
At the same time, we, at least, believe that
Subject must be broken at some point if we are
to learn something of the full scope of the
KGB plan, the timing for its execution, and
the role played by others in it. In addition,
we must have this information if we are to
decide what countermeasures we should take in
terms of counter-propaganda, modifications in
our security practices, and planning for future
operations against the Soviet target. Admittedly,
our desire to continue debriefing to obtain
additional information may conflict with the
heed to break Subject. Clearly, the big problem
is one of timing. How long can we keep Subject,
or his KGB controllers, ignorant of our aware¬
ness of this operation and how long will it
take us to assemble the kind of brief we will
need to initiate a hostile interrogation in
conditions of maximum control?
If we are to proceed along the lines indicated
above we should accept in advance the premise
that we will not be able to prevent Subject
from evading our custody or communicating with
the Soviets unless we place him under such
physical restraint that it will become immedi¬
ately apparent to him that we Suspect him.
This may not be an acceptable risk and if it is
not, we should so determine right away and
decide on a completely different course of
action. If this is to be the case, we should
agree to forego additional debriefings, place
Subj ect in escape-proof quarters away from the
Washington area under full-time guard and com¬
mence hostile debriefing on the basis of the
material we. already have (although the prospects
for success would not be great). Disposal would
probably be via Berlin followed by a brief press
release to the effect that Subject had con¬
fessed to being a plant and had been allowed to
return to Soviet control. [In the meantime,
SR Division would:]
--Advise Subject that during this phase he will
continue to live and work in the safehouse
and will be escorted at all times when on
shopping trips, visits to movies, etc.,
because of his faulty English and unfamil¬
iarity with the country, customs, etc.
While we can explain this regime as needed
for his security, we cannot keep him locked
up in the house 24 hours a day.
- - Provide Subj ect with "flash" documentation in
another name to be carried on his person
during excursions from the house. They may
also help persuade him he has been accepted.
--Make available to Subject a portion of the
[money] promised him which he can use for
purchases of clothes, cigarettes, personal
effects , etc.
--Agree that whenever this first phase is over
(four to six weeks) that he be permitted to
• take a two-week vacation with escort.
The vacation period will be of greater benefit to .
us since it will provide us with an opportunity
to review and make judgments on the value of the
information already obtained and also to con¬
sider the progress made in the other aspects of
the case outlined below. During the vacation we
can decide whether we should proceed to the
second phase or are ready to commence hostile
interrogation under controlled conditions. If
it is the former, we will have to reckon with
the need to modify the living and working
arrangements for Subj ect in a way which will
inevitably give him some additional freedom.
At the same time, we would be expected to
move forward with Subject's legalization,
i. e., final decision on a name he will use,
securing an alien registration card, estab¬
lishing a bank account, etc. Therefore, it
will be terribly important to make the proper
decision at the end of phase one. .
This decision will depend not only on our
evaluation of the material obtained during
the debriefings but on how far we have been
able to go in clarifying other cases which
are related to Subject case and form an impor¬
tant part of any explanation of the KGB's goals
in this operation.
Thus, Nosenko was surrounded from the first with ambi
valence and uncertainty. On the one hand, he was housed
in circums’tances that his principal day-to-day handler
describes as "our typical, luxurious style ..." He
continues by saying that "there was all the food and drink
one could possibly want ... I remember all of the effort
and the money we spent to get a billiard table ..."
On the other hand, this handler, who was assigned to this
case after having worked on the Golitsyn affair, was told
at the outset that Nosenko was "dirty, that he had been
sent by the KGB ..."
Writing of his first meeting with Nosenko on 13
February, the handler recorded his first impressions of
Nosenko:
In this brief meeting lasting actually less than
two hours, I couldn' t prevent myself from
putting him in three successive categories.'
In the first few minutes I put him in the cate¬
gory of a Cuban exile living in the Harlem section
of New York City. This impression came to my
mind strictly on the basis of his clothing (dark
trousers and sport shirt, black elevated shoes,
sharply pointed and with a design) and his
mannerisms . . .
Half way through the session I put him in the
category of a big city but small-time con man.
While dictating . . . from his notes, he knew
exactly what he wanted to say and how he wanted
to say it. But when I had brief conversations
with him on other topics, or when I saw him
stealing glances in my direction to size me up,
I could almost see the con man's wheels turning
rapidly in his head. I had an urge to check my
wallet just to make sure it was still safe.
1 '1-00000
SECRET
-25-
As the session ended and we moved into the
living room I put him in a third category.
Before leaving the debriefing room I noticed
how he touched [another case officer] on the
shoulder. When [that case officer] went down¬
stairs for a few minutes, [Nosenko] and I
walked into the living room. During that
brief walk I decided to give him a President
Johnson handshake (hand and elbow grasp, Texas
style) on departure and a few sincere words
about how pleased I was to meet and talk with
him, but his actions soon changed my mind.
As soon as we reached the middle of the living
room he gave me an unexpected and prolonged
hug around the shoulders and waist, the type
that one man gives another well known to him
only after some achievement such as making
the decisive point in a football game. His
embrace really took me by surprise and I had
to pull away from him without hurting his
feelings. At this point I realized that I
couldn't go through with the President Johnson
handshake; he'd have to settle for less. In
this, the third category, I saw him as a jazz
musician who sells heroin on the side and has
homosexual tendencies.
A week later, on 20 February, however, the handler
reported more favorable impressions, those of the Office
of Security personnel assigned to guard Nosenko at the
safehouse:
Subject is not at all concerned about his own
security or the threat of assassination or
kidnapping. He seems to think the present
security system is fine . . . [This was in
marked contrast to Golitsyn's behavior.]
Subj ect is not a heavy drinker and is never
"under the influence" . . .
Subject is not a heavy smoker . . .
At mealtime Subj ect sits at the dining table
with the guards and acts as if he is one of
the boys. He does not sit at the head of the
table but to the side. He always offers the
] '1-00000
- 26 -
boys a drink, asks them to take more food, and
kids them . . .
He does not play cards, has shown no interest
in chess, and has not mentioned checkers. He
does not gamble and doesn't seem to have any
hobby or inside activity to keep himself busy.
He has shown a desire to play pool . . .
Subject does not say anything for or against the
USSR or the Communist Party. Even when viewing
the Olympics on TV Subj ect never once commented
on how good the Soviets were and how poor a
showing the Americans made. The same could not
be said for . . . [Golitsyn] . . . On the con¬
trary Subject wants to be an American as soon
as possible.
Subject's sexual desires appear to be normal . . .
Subj ect has made several joking references to
their all going together to a house of prosti¬
tution . ... Subj ect definitely wants a woman
and the sooner the better ...
Subj ect has not commented one way or another,
for or against, any person associated with him,
including the housekeepers. Compared with other
cases he is ideal. He is polite, likes to kid,
doesn't have a drinking problem, doesn*t have
a mental problem, and wants to become an
American and work like and with Americans as
soon as possible.
Subj ect became angry only once and even then it
was not a loss of temper in the true sense.
The day that [the principal case officer] dis¬
cussed the schedule with him, Subj ect became
moody and started to drink alone. He told the
guards that he wants to use his brains and work
hard as Americans do. He feels that the present
schedule does not utilize his talent to the
fullest.
■ The "schedule" referred to above had been outlined to
Nosenko in a 17 February meeting, during which the
principal case officer had assured him that "both [Chief,
SR] and myself are enthusiastically optimistic about
'1-00000
SECRET
-27-
future cooperation with him in operations against the
USSR." Nosenko greeted plans for a period devoted to
systematic debriefing with the statement that this
"might represent an attempt to extract all his informa¬
tion from him, after which he would not be needed."
He also said he needed a vacation at "an early date
in order to help him forget and get over the strain
and worry of his abrupt change of situation, particularly
the strain of leaving his family behind."
E. The Problem of Disposition .
Far from being optimistic about our "cooperation"
with Nosenko, SR Division was discussing the possibility
of forcibly returning him to the Soviets if the "overall
effort to break him" came to naught. In addition, an
alternative plan was being developed for the incarcera¬
tion of Nosenko, so that "there can be no question of
[his] escaping after he becomes aware of our attitude."
Finally, it was agreed that Golitsyn, who had meanwhile
recognized Nosenko as the author of the ostensible
"anonymous letter" of 26 June 1962, would be brought
into the operation to back up our interrogation. Helms
originally had some misgivings about this procedure but
appears eventually to have agreed to giving Golitsyn
"full access" to material from Nosenko, but not to
Nosenko himself.
The FBI viewed Nosenko much more favorably than
did CIA. As early as 8 February 1964, Chief, Cl had
sent a cable reading in part:
. . . [FBI liaison officer] STATED . . . THAT
FRIEND OF HIS WHO IS EXPERT INjFBI QUICKLY
SCANNED AEFOXTROT PRODUCTION AND CAUTIONED
US THAT "IT LOOKS VERY GOOD" IN TERMS OF CASES
KNOWN TO THEM.
Later, in a memorandum to Helms on 9 March, Chief, SR
stated that "the FBI personnel on the case have so far
indicated they believe Subject to be a genuine KGB
defector." By implication, both Chief, SR and Chief, Cl
regarded this divergence of view as a serious problem.
Their concern is understandable, because a subsequent
paragraph of the Chief, SR memorandum contained plans
for the following action, to be initiated around 1 April
SECRET
1964, which would not be appropriate if CIA were
forced, as a result of inter-agency consultations,
to treat Nosenko as a bona fide defector:
a. Subject to be moved to a high
security safehouse under maximuift guard.
b. The DCI to inform the President,
Secretary of State, Director, FBI, and
USIB principals that Subject is a KGB
plant whom we intend to return to Soviet
control after (1) trying to break him,
and (2) publicizing his case.
c. Retain Subject incommunicado for
about three weeks during which time we will
continue efforts to break him.
d. At the same time, commence the
publicity campaign which will precede
Subj ect's deportation. As a first step,
there will be a brief official announcement
probably by a State Department spokesman
to the effect that Subj ect has confessed
to having faked his defection at KGB
direction in order (1) to penetrate US •
intelligence and security agencies, and (2)
to discredit the act of defection by Soviet
citizens. At the same time, a press back¬
grounder will■be made available which will
characterize this KGB operation as an act of
desperation following a decade of defection
and disloyalty to the regime on the part of
a score of senior Soviet intelligence of¬
ficers ...
Erratic Behavior and Its Aftermath
While planning was going on for his confinement
and hostile interrogation, Nosenko was taken on a trip
for two weeks' relaxation, beginning on 12 March. During
this period, his consumption of alcohol was enormous, and
his behavior became increasingly erratic. Prior to his
departure, he had on several occasions been violent; on
one occasion he took a swipe with his fist at the princi¬
pal case officer and on another tried to strangle one of
the Office of Security escorts.
1-00000
The handler who spent the first part of the
vacation with Nosenko recorded these impressions:
In my opinion Subject is under extreme ten¬
sion and pressure. Any man who skips break¬
fast and starts the day off with alcohol
is on his way to becoming an alcoholic.
He drinks not for the enj oyment of it, but
with an attempt to erase or lessen problems
of a serious nature. I suspect that these
tensions are the result of two things:
one, fear on his part that he cannot follow
through with his assignment; and, two, his
homosexual desires. I predict that the
situation will not improve but grow worse.
Yet the handler concluded on the following note :
Despite our oral arguments and the various
incidents we experienced, Subject and I
parted on the best of terms. He gave me an
affectionate embrace on the night of my
departure, and in front of [the principal
case officer] thanked me for my attention
to his needs and patience in dealing with
him. We agreed to see each other upon his
return to Washington.
During the last half of the vacation, the principal
case officer arrived and took charge of the escort team.
Nosenko was more restrained in his presence than he had
been previously, but the principal case officer had no
success in eliciting information from him during this
period. Not only was Nosenko uninformative, according
to the principal case officer, but he was also very tense
and unable to sleep more than a few'hours at a time.
Although debriefing was resumed upon returning to
Washington, it cannot have been very successful. Nosenko
was still drinking enormously and had by now discovered
unfettered night life; it is doubtful that he was physi-
cally able to respond meaningfully to interrogation during
the day.
On 30 March 1964, Chief, SR wrote a memorandum to
Helms entitled "Final Phase Planning," which Helms
init ialed and returned without written comment. Inter
alia, Chief, SR had this to say:
SECRET
SECRET
- 30 -
We have concluded that there is little to
be gained by prolonging the status quo
beyond next weekend and every reason to
suspect that if Subject learns we doubt
him, he will try to escape. Accordingly,
we have instructed the security guards to
be alert to any attempts on Subject’s part
to elude them ...
Further scheduling must depend in consider¬
able degree on the results of the interroga¬
tion. * However, since we do not anticipate
that Nosenko will ever break to the point of
becoming completely cooperative, and since
we must assume that within five or six days '
after the confrontation begins, news of our
action will have leaked out through the
briefings (however necessary they may have
been) , we should be ready to take this action
Have State Department spokesman issue
low key statement indicating that
Nosenko is plant with mission to seek
out and report on bona fide defectors
living in the United States.
Mail letter in Moscow (or from Helsinki
to Moscow) addressed to Lieutenant
General Oleg Mikhailovich Gribanov
which makes it clear that we were on
to operation all along but also that
choice of Nosenko as key figure in
operation was a mistake. To emphasize
latter point include as an attachment
a description of Nosenko behavior.
This would be couched in dry, almost
clinical, language . . . Aside from
the not inconsiderable satisfaction we
will have in preparing it, this letter
will serve to dissuade the Soviets from
an overly hasty reaction to our press
stories and should also make them
reasonably anxious to get Nosenko back
to determine what happened.
'1-00000
SECRET
-31-
Since failure to "break" Nosenko--i.e., force
him to admit that he had come to us not as a genuine
defector but as a KGB-dispatched agent--was considered
virtually certain, plans were also being laid to re¬
turn him to the Soviet authorities. Before doing
this, however, it would be necessary to:
. . . Discuss with Legal Counsel the legal
problems which might be encountered in ar¬
ranging Nosenko's deportation. The simplest ;
method still appears to be [flying him] to
Tempelhof in Berlin. Thence to S-Bahnhof
Tiergarten where Subject, in his best
civilian clothes, with diplomatic passport,
would be placed on an S-Bahn which then
stops inside East Berlin only at the control
point S-Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse.
G. The Decision to Incarcerate
Although Nosenko had already contributed con¬
siderable intelligence of value (see Chapter IV), in¬
cluding information that led directly to the arrest of
Vassall in 1962, there is no indication in the files
from this period that the possibility of his being a
bona fide defector was given any credence whatsoever,
either within the Agency or in discussions with other
parts of the government.
On the contrary, Nosenko was treated as one whose
. guilt had been established. Nevertheless, even while
Chief, SR was registering with certainty his lack of
hope for a favorable resolution, plans were drawn up
for an "arrest," strict confinement:and hostile interro¬
gation .
The long-delayed polygraph evaluation was administered
on 4 April 1964. It did not, however, take place under
standard conditions. In his report of 8 April 1964, the
polygraph operator stated:
During the pre-polygraph conferences with repre¬
sentatives of SR Division, the undersigned was
informed that the polygraph interview was part
of an overall plan to help break Subject and
elicit the truth from him. SR Division’s
SECRET
-32-
instructions were that, regardless of whether
Subject passed his polygraph test or not, he
was to be informed at the termination of his
polygraph interview that he was lying, and
had not passed his polygraph interview.
First Polygraph Examination
To raise Nosenko's level of apprehension and reduce
his supposed defenses against the polygraph interroga¬
tion technique, an additional mechanism was also attached
to him, which he was told was an electroencephalograph
(EEG). Chief, SR later commented that ’’Nosenko was com¬
pletely confident of the polygraph when told that it
would be used until he discovered that an electroencephal
graph was used at the same time. The unexpected addition
of the EEG to the polygraph was successful and materially
aided the interrogators. Nosenko proved to be an excel¬
lent reactor ..."
Despite the unusual circumstances surrounding the
examination, the polygraph operator’s conclusions, as
stated in his report of 8 April 1964, were categorical:
It is the undersigned's conclusion that Subject
is not a bona fide defector, but is a dispatched
agent sent by Soviet Intelligence for a specific
mission or missions.
According to the pre-agreed upon plan, the
different phases involving various pertinent
areas were covered with Subject polygraphically.
Challenge of Subject's reactions was indirect
and "soft." On no occasion di$ Subject even
attempt to volunteer any explanation of the
possible causes for his polygraph reactions.
He continually denied and refused to admit
that there was anything to any of the ques¬
tions which were asked of him. When the final
test questions were completed and a record was
obtained of all of Subj ect * s polygraphic re¬
sponses , the nature of the challenge and
probing was changed.
Subj ect was told that he was lying to numerous
pertinent questions and was accused of being
1 '1-00000
SECRET
-33-
a dispatched agent. Subject’s only explanation
to the undersigned’s direct accusation was that
he could not be a dispatched agent because of
the amount of information he had volunteered to
American Intelligence.
Subject, who before and throughout testing
reflected complete self-control and composure,
now exhibited a completely different picture.
His composure was nonexistent, his eyes watered,
and his hands trembled. Prior to being con¬
fronted with the undersigned’s opinion that
Subject was a dispatched agent, when Subject
was asked on one of the last test runs (a)
if he was sent to penetrate American Intelli¬
gence, and (b) if Subject received instructions
from the KGB on how to attempt to beat the polygraph,
his answers were given in a voice that actually
trembled.
After completion of the interview, the SR repre¬
sentative at the safesite was informed, in front
of Subj ect, of the undersigned ’ s opinion that
Subj ect was lying and was a dispatched Soviet
agent. The Subj ect was taken into protective
custody and escorted to his new place of resi¬
dence .
Once arrived at the place of confinement, Nosenko
was confronted by the principal case officer who broke
the news that Nosenko had been under suspicion since
1962. The record of the meeting, a stormy one, is too
long to reproduce here, but the following excerpt will
convey its tone:
Principal case officer:
. . . Everything you have said in 1962 and
1964 is prepared, based on disinformation . .
All disinformation is true in parts . That ’s
all right, we know that. Now if we can
talk--what I want to do is talk the real
truth ... We want to talk about the opera¬
tion which sent you and others to us . . .
Nosenko: (In Russian) ... I don’t understand. What
has happened? What has happened? What’s the
matter? I don’t understand.
14-00000
SECRET
-34-
Principal case officer:
What happened in 1962?
Nosenko: What happened in general?
Principal case officer:
Your operation was known from the beginning.
Nosenko: (In Russian) I can't understand anything.
I give you my word, but then my?word means
nothing to you. I can't understand anything.
All that I could do I tried to do. I tried
to do it for my soul.
Chief, SR reported these subsequent developments as
he saw them to Helms on 7 April:
The results of the polygraph were reviewed with
the DDP on the basis of our sessions on 6 April
with the polygraph examiner. He obtained signi¬
ficant reactions on those areas in which we were
convinced Subject was withholding information or
passing deception but also uncovered for us that
Subject is somehow concerned about his biography.
The first interrogation after the polygraph was
conducted on the afternoon of 6 April . .
[We] monitored the interrogation through a two-
way mirror in an adjoining room. It was agreed
before beginning this first interrogation that
its purpose was to determine whether or not
Subject would respond to questions or simply
clam up after making some sortjOf statement.
The areas we planned to hit as‘tests were some
of those on which we knew he was passing
deception material.
We were all gratified by the fact that Subj ect
was ready and eager to explain himself and in
responding to questions under tense cross-
examination, particularly with regard to the
sourcing of some of his information, he became
quite erratic, contradicted himself many times
and became upset physically.
SECRET
SECRET
>
-35-
As a result of this session, we know that
Subject can be thrown off balance by aggres¬
sive questioning in those areas which we know
to be important parts of the entire KGB opera¬
tion. Thus, we will continue along these
lines for several days with a specific inter¬
rogation plan mapped out for each session.
At the end of the first interrogation session,
Subj ect noted that he had not harmed the
United States in any way and that if we did
not believe him, he would consider going to a
third country because as he put it, ,f I could
not return to the USSR." When we begin the
next session with him, we will tell him that
his statement with respect to not having
harmed the US is erroneous. We will refer
■ to His direct participation in the Barghoorn
case and to the fact that his very mission it¬
self is directed against US internal security.
If he again raises the third country approach
(but only if he raises it), we will advise him
that were he to go to a third country at some
point in the future that country would be fully
apprised to our information concerning his mis¬
sion to the West and the details of his personal
behavior.
Whether Helms was informed of the peculiar conditions
under which the polygraph was administered cannot be as¬
certained from the record. Chief, SR simply told him
that the examiner had "obtained significant reactions"
and that "Subject can be thrown off balance ..." In
this connection, it is useful to note here that, in a
number of documents related to this,case, this polygraph
examination is referred to as valid"evidence of Nosenko's
duplicity, without giving the reader any hint of the
unusual circumstances surrounding it. Even in the lengthy
study of February 1967 (commonly referred to as "the
thousand-page paper") , and in the shorter "green book"
formally published in February 1968, one finds no
cautionary notes. To put in perspective the developments
of this case, both those already reported and those still
to come, we shall therefore jump ahead briefly to quote
from a formal Office of Security report covering a review
of the 1964 examination. The senior of the three poly- '
graph specialists who reviewed it stated his conclusions
as follows, in a memorandum dated 1 November 1966:
-36-
Even without the review by reviewing examiners,
I considered the formal report dated 8 April
1964 to have been in error in that the con¬
clusions reached in the case were a gross
misinterpretation of the extent to which the
reactions added up. In fact, in some instances
the Subject was deemed to be lying when it is
known he was telling the truth. With the re¬
view by the reviewing examiners, I can conclude
only that the initial examiner did exactly what
the requestor asked; i.e. , he was told to
collect reactions and he did. The fact that
reactions were not consistent (and indeed may
not have occurred) was not important since it
had already been decided Subject was wrong and
the polygraph was used only to support his de¬
cision.
I. Incarceration and Interrogation
Many aspects of this case did not go according to
plan, but one that did was the incarceration of Nosenko
An Office of Security representative who periodically
guarded Nosenko from November 1964 to May 1968, when
questioned on 21 July 1976, described the regime as
follows:
Security Officer (SO) :
While he was [incarcerated], he was being held
in a room in an old safehouse down there . . .
it was an attic room . . . and he was afforded
24 hours visual custody observance by the security
team.
<P
Q: What does visual custody observance mean? You
mean there' s somebody in the room with him?
SO: No, the room had a special door. The top half
of the door was a metal screen type where we
were actually positioned outside the door on a
24-hour basis. There were two security escorts
on duty 24 hours a day, and we were instructed
to maintain visual observance of him--just ob¬
serve his activities.
i '1-00000
SECRET
-37-
Q: Now, what was the purpose of visually observing
him 24 hours a day?
SO: Apparently to see that he made no attempts to
escape, made no attempts to injure himself.
There were never any problems along these lines.
For much of his confinement, the principal break
in a day* s monotony occurred when Nosenko was under
interrogation. It is not necessary here to cover the
various interrogations in detail; suffice it to say that,
although they were conducted fitfully, with bursts of
activity followed by long periods of quiescence, almost
every technique of interrogation short of physical violence
was either tried or at least considered. A few of the
high points will be summarized in the succeeding para¬
graphs .
After he "failed" his polygraph on 6 April 1964,
Nosenko was interrogated on an almost daily basis for
nearly three weeks. During this period a participant
commented that "we have received daily support for our
conviction that Subject was sent on a KGB mission ..."
and by 25 April the interrogators concluded:
We have gone about as far as the time permitted
for the "information gathering" phase of the
interrogation will allow . . . The task now
is to sort out and analyze the results of the
past three weeks of interrogation, to mark
out the strong and the weak portions of
Subject's story, and to plan the strategy and
tactics of the next phase ... In the mean¬
time , Subject will be given a short haircut
to dramatize his situation, an4 a week or so
without interrogations to emphasize our willing¬
ness to keep his [sic] indefinitely and to
heighten his tensions.
Meanwhile, Golitsyn had been brought into the case
and was being employed as a behind-the-scenes consultant
in connection with the interrogations . Golitsyn was
given for analysis voluminous material relating to the
case and was told that "one of the most perplexing aspects
of the Nosenko case to us at the present time is not
whether he was sent (we all certainly agree with your
view that he was sent on a mission) but the exact nature
14-00000
SECRET
- 38 -
of his service with the KGB." Golitsyn f s role will
be covered more thoroughly in a separate chapter.
To ensure cooperation in the interrogation, an
"Outline of Action to be Taken Should Subject Refuse
to Answer Requirements" was drawn up on 25 August 1964.
The tenor of this outline, which essentially set the
basic policy of the incarceration until late 1967, is
conveyed by the following excerpt:
Should Subject refuse to answer the case offi¬
cer’s questions, Subject will be returned to
his cell at a time chosen by the case officer,
there’ will be no further conversations between
Subj ect and the guards except that which is
absolutely necessary, and the case officer
will notify Chief, SR. At the case officer's
discretion. Subject may lose his cigarette
privileges immediately. Each day for an in¬
definite period the case officer will return
and begin a session with Subject. If Subject
refuses each day to discuss the questions, he
will lose an additional privilege in the fol¬
lowing order: cigarettes, table, chair, reading
material, ruler, paper and pencil. In no case,
however, will any of these privileges be removed
except with the prior approval of Chief, SR.
The basic policy to be followed during interroga¬
tions was outlined even more fully in a lengthy memorandum
of 2 November 1964. Like all other documents on this sub-
ject, it assumed that Nosenko was lying and had to be
"trapped":
How the Interrogation will be Begun : Subject
will initially be confronted only by interro¬
gators already known to him. They will begin
detailed and apparently routine questioning
on carefully selected operations or other as¬
pects of the 1960-1962 period. This time,
however, the interrogators will be prepared to
stick doggedly to the particular subj ect. They
will probe deeper and deeper for detail, never
allowing Subject to dismiss them with such state¬
ments as "that is the way it was" or "that is
all I remember." We would prefer to begin in
this way so that Subj ect will already be under
1 '1-00000
SECRET
-39-
pressure , cornered and in trouble by the
time he realizes that this is not a routine
questioning but the climax of his long period
of detention. In view of Subject’s personality,
one psychologist believes that Subject would
otherwise welcome this climax and sharpen his
wits for a final battle to hoodwink us and
regain his freedom.
Position Into Which Subject is to be Put :
Once Subject has been trapped and cornered a
few times, the basic theme of the interrogation
will be put to him. He has protested his sin¬
cerity and desire to convince us of his truth.
He must do this now ; otherwise he is here to
stay. He can only talk his way out by convinc¬
ing us. In fact, he has shown in the present
session and over the past months that he is
unable to support his legend. He simply does
not know the facts that anyone in his alleged
position would have to know. We will con front
him with our collateral knowledge, and insist
that he answer our questions and prove his
point. As he repeatedly fails to do so, he
will be repeatedly accused of lying and of
proving what we already know: that the entire
service in the American Department was a clumsy
fabrication, and he must confess it in order to
get out.
Interrogation Guides: We will identify every
detailed weakness, contradiction and omission in
his stories, line them up with care according to
priorities designed for maximum impact on Sub¬
ject , and prep are interrogation briefs accord¬
ingly . . .
The Question of A ttacking Him Personally or
Pla cing the Blame on his KGB Superiors : In
planning this interrogation we have examined two
alternative methods of approach: (1) to attempt
to destroy his own self-confidence by attacking
him personally, exploiting our knowledge of his
weaknesses and misbehavior, or (2) to pin the
ultimate blame on his superiors, who sent him
out under serious misapprehensions and with
inadequate briefing. Psychologists who have
examined Subject agree that he is pathologically
self-centered. Since his own pride and his
illusions of infallibility may constitute his
last bulwark of self-protection, he may resist
us more doggedly in this area than any other.
The other course seems best. As he increasingly
fails to answer our questions, we will point out
to him the inadequacy of his briefing and the
stupidity and fraud of which he has been made a
victim. We will confront him with actual inci¬
dences which he must know about and then ask him
for details . Over and. over again, we will demon¬
strate and emphasize how inadequate his training
and preparation was. We will demonstrate to Sub¬
ject that the KGB consciously and callously sent
him on an impossible mission and purposefully
deceived him about the information that Subject
himself considers the most important to the
establishment of his bona fides . . .
The possible outcomes foreseen as a result of the interro
gation were also based on the assumption that he had been
lying about his reasons for coming to us:
Full Success : If Subject confesses fully, he will
have broken with the KGB and will become depen¬
dent upon us for his security and well-being.
After full debriefing and establishment of bona
fides he wi 11 presumably be returned to a conr
ventional safehouse and a life similar to the
January to April 1964 period in which he will
be permitted to go out with a security escort
while we continue his exploitation and plan his
future. j
Partial Success : If Subject makes significant
admissions and falls back on a second level
cover story, he will be kept in the present
safehouse. His personal circumstances and
intensity of interrogation will be determined
by the situation obtaining at that time.
Failure : I f the interrogation fails, we would
plan to put him "on ice" for a period, then
interrogate him again. For this interim period,
Subj ect would be transferred to visibly more
14-00000
SECRET
-41-
permanent and more secure quarters . From the
makeshift physical set up of his present
quarters, the large number of guards who rotate
weekly and the round-the-clock visual observa¬
tion by two guards, it is obvious to Subject
that his quarters (and therefore his situation)
is temporary. As long as he knows that, he can
hope. Our only hope of breaking Subject will
be to allow him to convince himself that he has
got into a situation from which he can extricate
himself only by cooperating. This could be
best achieved by breaking sharply with the
present situation, placing him in permanent
quarters, preferably remote and more primitive
than his present quarters, physically secure
and resembling jail, and capable of being manned
by a minimum of guard personnel who would not
keep him under constant direct visual observa¬
tion. No Headquarters case officer would visit
him, until he has given sign that he has changed
his mind. . This period would last for several
months, pending another attempt to break him
based on information obtained in the interim.
J. Elaboration of the Plot Theory
The stringency of the rules governing treatment of
Nosenko varied from time to time, but the general trend
was to take an ever harder line towards him. Since it
was assumed that he was a KGB-dispatched agent, he could
only satisfy his interrogators by admitting that such
was the case. But, while he would from time to time at¬
tempt to placate his questioners with admissions of having
lied or incorrectly reported certain past events, he would
never admit to the key accusation of being KGB-controlled.
The inevitable result was not only greater harshness
toward him but a gradually spreading suspicion in regard
to other agents, past and present, who seemed in any way
to support his bona fides . This development is mirrored
in a memorandum that the principal case officer wrote
after a visit with Helms on 19 November 1964 :
In connection with Nosenko, Mr. Helms referred
to it as one of the greatest time consumers
he had ever seen. I remarked that I felt the
time was well spent since our examination of this
1 '1-00000
SECRET
-42-
case had opened our eyes not only to security
threats in our own midst and within the US
government, but also had revealed that many
other important sources were in fact KGB provo¬
cations and in fact that our entire counterin¬
telligence effort, double agents and all, may
be contaminated and useless.
According to the theory being developed, no Soviet
or Soviet Bloc agent was immune from suspicion if his re¬
porting tended to confirm anything that Nosenko had said.
Agents who were then currently producing intelligence,
not only for CIA but also for the FBI and certain European
intelligence services, all came under heavy suspicion.
The single exception was Golitsyn. .The latter, although
he had confirmed Nosenko * s identity (which had itself been
in doubt at one point) as well as his affiliation with the
KGB, also contributed the elaborate rationale according
to which the KGB was sacrificing Nosenko and a host of
other agents and operations to protect even more important,
if somewhat nebulous, assets and plans. Golitsyn thus be¬
came the touchstone against whom the trustworthiness of
all other agents was judged.
Because Nosenko refused to "break," however, it was
hard to adduce proof of Golitsyn’s theory substantial
enough to convince Helms, the FBI, and other officials
and organizations not so deeply committed to the theory.
A lengthy paper on SR/CI ’ s findings on this subject was
always in the offing but was continually delayed; it did
not finally materialize until February 1967. On the
other hand, no one had at his fingertips the vast array
of facts, and suppositions masquerading as facts, on
which the case was based. The theory was therefore
difficult to challenge; there may eyen have been reluctance
to do so, because the main proponents of the disinformation
theory frequently referred to unhappy consequences that
would flow from abandoning the course upon which the
Agency had embarked. Should the Agency change course,
for example, by simply returning Nosenko to Soviet hands,
terrible, though ill-defined, consequences would cer¬
tainly ensue. As the principal case officer said (again
to his 20 November 1964 memorandum of conversation with
Helms) :
I pointed out the potential dangers of return¬
ing Nosenko unscathed and within a short time.
1 '1-00000
-43-
I thought the KGB would be . . . concerned
[by implication, amazed and delighted] only
by the fact that a defector thrus t into our
mits [sic] could expect such an easy fate
if uncovered.
K. Life in a Vault
The unforeseen stubbornness of Nosenko had meanwhile
brought SR Division to an impasse from which there was
but one escape--the more-or-less permanent incarceration
of Nosenko. Nothing that the latter said would be be¬
lieved except the one admission that he steadfastly re¬
fused to make (i.e., that he had been dispatched by the
KGB) , and, although Helms wanted to solve the problem
thus created by simply turning Nosenko back to the Soviets ,
this solution was resisted by the division. The upshot
was that, on 27 November 1964, Chief, SR wrote:
...If he fails to convince us (which he
can* t) and refuses to confess what we already
- know, the US government has every intention
of protecting itself against this dangerous
provocation by detaining him indefinitely.
The decision was therefore taken, with Helms 1 approval,
to build a new detention facility. The cell constructed
for Nosenko 1 s occupancy was essentially a vault enveloped
by a barracks-type building. Its pro j ected amenities were
described as follows:
a. Small cell with concrete floor and
ceiling and walls lined with metal.
b. No electrical outlets "in the cell,
lighting to be recessed and grilled and con¬
trolled from the day room.
c. No window in the cell.
d. One entrance to the cell which will be
of the metal bar type with an exterior door in
front of this and a sliding panel in the exte¬
rior door which will permit a complete view of
the cell area. Plexiglass will be used in the
observation panel rather than glass.
SECRET
i '1-00000
SECRET
-44-
e. A toilet facility which will adjoin
the cell and contain a shower, basin and com¬
mode . With the exception of the commode,
which will be the prison push-button type,
all controls will be in the day room area and
will also contain a plexiglass observation
port with a sliding panel on the exterior.
f. An exercise area just outside the
nearest door which will be fenced and screened
(so that Nosenko can only look up and see only
the sky).
As the new installation neared completion. Chief,
SR on 15 June 1965 wrote Helms:
We believe that we have gone just about as far
as normal interrogation techniques will take
us, and that the time has come to prepare Sub¬
ject for his move to the ostensibly permanent
detention site ... It will be ready for
occupancy on or about 1 August. Chief, SR/Cl
visited the site on 11 June and reports that
the installation is excellent from every point
of view.
Before returning the memorandum, Helms penned a
marginal note next to the above paragraph: "I would
like both you and [Chief, Cl] to examine this site."
If Helms had had any doubt about the site’s suitability
he must have been reassured by a 28 July 1965 memorandum
addressed to him by the Director of Security:
On Tuesday, 27 July, the Chief,, Cl Staff, the -
Chief, SR Division and the unde'rsigned [in¬
spected] the newly constructed special detention
facility ... As you know, . . . it is planned
to utilize this facility to hold AEFOXTROT for
an indefinite period . . .
By mid-August, the time had come for Nosenko’s transfer
The events surrounding it are recounted in a 19 August 1965
memorandum for the record:
As planned, . . . [the principal case officer]
had a brief "confrontation scene" with Subject
14-00000
SECRET
-45-
on the same evening, immediately prior to his
removal to new quarters. The purpose of this
session was not to deliver a new message of
any sort, or to give Subject "another chance
to confess"; everything that could be said had
already been said by . . . the previous inter¬
rogators, and there was no doubt that Subject
understood perfectly well the meaning and
importance of what had been said to him; also,
it was recognized that Subject would sense an
impending move or change of some sort, and that
it was inevitable that he would hope that the
change would be for the better until he saw
otherwise. The purpose of the confrontation
was rather to close the circle: to show him
that although [the principal case officer] had
not seen him for over a year nothing had changed,
and nothing would change until he told the .
truth. An additional effect would be to empha¬
size that the interrogators who had worked with
him in the interim were fully responsible and
authoritative, and that just as Subj ect had been
told when he was first locked up in April 1964,
what he was up against was the collapse of the
operation in which he was involved. Finally,
[the principal case officer] would stress . . .
that the "investigation is closed" and that
Subject had only prolonged and total isolation
to look forward to now unless and until he
decides to confess.
The meeting took place just about as planned.
It lasted for 15 minutes only (2100 to 2115)
and was essentially a formality, although it
is hoped that Subj ect will have reason to re¬
flect on it in the months ahead. As can be
seen from the attached summary transcript,
Subject did not display any hesitancy or
indecision, and his answers and statements
were made in a mechanical manner.
The 19 August memorandum concludes:
Immediately upon termination of the interview
with [the principal case officer], Subject was
blindfolded and led out of the house according
to the prearranged plan. He was clearly frightened,
4-00000
SECRET
-46-
but did not put up the slightest resistance.
The move to the new quarters took place exactly
as planned.
The new detention facility had been designed and
staffed with the intention of engendering in Nosenko a
feeling of hopelessness, from which the only escape
would be through confession that he was a KGB agent
and revelation of the full details of how he had been
briefed and dispatched by the Soviet authorities. With
the exception of being allowed certain books, carefully
selected for him by SR Division, Nosenko was confined
under conditions that were as close to stimulus -free as
was consistent with maintaining him in good physical
health. For example, the TV used by the guards was
fitted with earphones, so that there was no risk of his
overhearing snatches of dialogue. The principal case
officer was assured, in answer to an inquiry, that
"while he does note planes going overhead as well as
animal noises from the woods during exercise periods,
everything else . . . is excluded." As to the guards,
if Nosenko were to attempt to open conversation with
them on any subject, "the guards should instruct him
in rude terms to shut up."
At this point, we must pause to consider for the
moment how the period that follows is to be covered.
Because there were long periods of time when no human
being other than the guards was in contact with Nosenko,
and because he was not allowed to keep a diary, the
story of his sojourn from August 1965 to October 1967
does not lend itself easily to narrative presentation.
Yet this period cannot be ignored. It constituted
over half of Nosenko* s solitary confinement. And that
three-and-a-half-year period amounts to five percent of
the total life span of a man who lives to be 70.
Obviously, then, this period will weigh heavily
in the findings made at the conclusion of our study.
For these findings to be valid, they must be made ' on
the basis of as much empirical evidence as can be
gathered. Because the effect on Nosenko of this long
period of confinement can only be dealt with speculatively,
such few remarks as we have on that subject will be
SECRET
SECRET
-47-
confined to the relatively discursive chapter on
"Psychological and Medical Findings.” Within the
body of Chapter III, we are limiting ourselves to
coverage of the main recorded events, none of which
are seen through the eyes of Nosenko himself.
We now resume our narrative.
On 13 August 1965, before Nosenko was locked into
his cell for the first time, he was read the following
instructions, which outlined the basic rules to be fol¬
lowed from*then on:
Cell
This - is your cell. You are to keep it clean
and will be given cleaning materials for this
purpose.
Reading Privilege
You will be permitted one book a week which
you may retain in your cell.
Smoking Privilege
You will receive a daily cigarette ration.
Exercising Privilege
Every day, weather and other factors permitting,
you will have an exercise period.
Writing Material i
Writing material will be provided only for
correspondence with the appropriate authorities
concerning your confession.
Schedule
This prison operates on a schedule. You will
become familiar with this schedule and adhere
to it at all times.
SECRET
SECRET
)
-48-
Within the framework of the above rules, which were
strictly enforced, Nosenko's only diversion was reading
the one book per week that he was at first allowed. He
did not even have the distraction of being questioned,
for, when queried by Helms on 12 January 1966, Chief,
SR stated that no one from SR Division had seen Nosenko
since the beginning of his confinement there, five
months earlier.
On 1 November 1965, his privileges began to be re¬
duced, for reasons that are not always clear from the
record. From that date on, for instance, he no longer
received books to read, and for minor acts of indiscipline
soap, towel and toothbrush were temporarily denied him.
Some time in January or February 1966, Nosenko
claimed to be suffering from auditory hallucinations.
In a memorandum dated 18 February 1966, Chief, SR re¬
ported:
. . . There are hopeful signs that the isolation
is beginning to have an effect on Subject. ([A
doctor’s] visit may have had further impact in
this direction when [the doctor] told Subject
that his visit constituted an ’’annual" physical
exam; as he left Subject’s room, [the doctor]
also remarked, "I’ll see you next year." Sub¬
ject's reaction was visible.)
Now we have just received further confirmation
of the development of Subj ect's attitude. On
the evening of 16 February 1966, he shouted for
a few seconds in English, apparently to guards,
that he would commit suicide and kept repeating,
"You' 11 see. You' 11 see." He asked to see the
local "doctor" (he has been tol'd that the medical
technician at the base is a doctor), but the
guards told him it was too late in the evening.
When the technician came the following day,
17 February, Subj ect talked at some length
about his worries that he might be going mad.
He has repeatedly stressed his belief that he
Is being drugged, but said on this occasion
that he recognized that there are no drugs
designed to make a person mad. Consequently,
he said, he was concerned about the fact that
during the past day or two he had heard voices
SECRET
emanating from various objects, such as his
shoe and his spoon, the engine of an aircraft
overhead, and a bird in a nearly tree. When
questioned, he said that the voices were say¬
ing in English "first die” while the bird was
saying "kid." He asked if the "doctor" con¬
sidered him insane. He was told that he did
not appear to be so, upon which he reiterated,
his worries and spoke of his desire to die.
He expressed his recognition that his present
circumstances do not afford means to commit
suicide.
Nosenko's alleged hallucinations triggered a special
meeting on 24 February 1966. The resultant memorandum
for the record, written by a member of SR/CI, is worth
quoting at length:
Representatives of SR Division, the Office of
Security, and the Medical Staff met in the SR
Conference Room from approximately 1400 to
1430 hours this date to discuss recent inci¬
dents in Nosenko's behavior and a forthcoming
examination of Nosenko by [a doctor] . . .
The undersigned entered the Conference Room
after discussions had begun, so some of the
initial remarks are not noted here.
[An Agency psychiatrist] first described to
those present his examination of Nosenko on
21 January 1966 and stated his opinion, based
on observations made at that time, that the
recent outbursts by Nosenko and his threats
of suicide are all contrived and do not
represent an involuntary reaction on his
part. Nosenko's recent behavior started with
suicide threats, then progressed to auditory
hallucinations, and has now reached the stage
where every inanimate object in his environ¬
ment , including the trees and the wind out¬
doors , are talking to him. [The psychiatrist]
expressed his view that, if Nosenko actually
does hear voices, it could normally be expected
that they would speak to him in his native
language, rather than in English as he told the
base medical technician during a recent visit.
Nosenko apparently now realizes this ([the
SECRET
-50-
psychiatrist] didn't describe how, but
presumably the technician commented on it
to Nosenko) and Nosenko, in [the psychiatrist *s]
opinion, has now picked this up and is trying to
recoup by saying that he now does everything in
English--think, speak, everything.
At this point, [the principal case officer]
described Nosenko’s recently begun word games,
in which he takes a Russian word and then figures
out as many root derivations as possible, as
an illustration of how.ridiculous Nosenko’s
claim is.
[The psychiatrist] continued to say that Nosenko
is now agreeing to take medication and is asking
for .additional medication to help raise his
spirits. [The psychiatrist] has told the base
medical technician not to answer Nosenko directly,
but to "let it be known” to Nosenko that the
medication he is now receiving will help him
out in this respect. ■ [The psychiatrist] then
repeated that he thinks that Nosenko is reacting
to his isolation, his lack of human contact, and
his environment, but that he is responding in a
planned, contrived, and non-spontaneous way, from
a psychiatric point of view. [The psychiatrist]
added that the only thing that is worrying him
at present concerning Nosenko is his possible
urinary problem, which is now being look into.
[The principal case officer] next explained to
those present that Nosenko’s current behavior
is consistent with our knowledge of Soviet training
in techniques of resisting interrogation and
imprisonment. However, because of intelligence
and cunning (although he has a fair share of
each), Nosenko has made some mistakes. [The
principal case officer] agreed that Nosenko is
probably feeling the effect of isolation and is
making this try to get out. When he finds that
this doesn't work, he may eventually decide "to
hell with it" and start to talk. . . . [the
principal case officer] said that he and [the
psychiatrist] agree that, should Nosenko raise
the issue of his alleged insanity during the
upcoming examination, the best response should
SECRET
-51-
be to the effect that, if Nosenko actually
is going out of his head, the best possible
thing for him is isolation, lots of rest,
and a place where he can't hurt himself.
This is what is usually prescribed and this
is, in fact, the situation Nosenko already
enjoys. [The principal case officer] added
that the wording of any such response would,
of course, be up to [the psychiatrist] .
In support of the above, [the psychiatrist]
then said that he had gone over things very
carefully during his January visit and, on
this basis, can see no basic change in
Nosenko. When [the psychiatrist] arrived
at the site he had remarked that he had come
for Nosenko's annual physical examination
and 'when he was leaving he told Nosenko that
he would see him again next year. In [the
psychiatrist's] opinion, Nosenko reacted to
this by saying to himself: "How can I get
but of here?" He has apparently decided
that the best way to escape his present
situation is to be sick with something that
can't be handled locally and then it will be
necessary for him to be moved to a hospital.
[The psychiatrist ] said that, from Nosenko ' s
point of view, any change will be for the
better and agreed with [the principal case
officer] that it is important to indicate
that there will be none. The simple state¬
ment suggested by [the principal case officer]
may give Nosenko the message and no further
explanation is necessary.
[An Office of Security representative] then
asked if, under conditions of prolonged con¬
finement , there is not a chance that a person
actually will go Off his rocker. [The
psychiatrist] replied that this is absolutely
so, that this happens in many cases under less
stringent conditions of imprisonment, and '
that the person usually improved quickly when
these conditions are relaxed. [The psychiatrist]
does not believe however that Nosenko fits in
this category.
[The Office of Security representative] then
asked what sort of behavior can be expected
in a person who is actually so affected by
his imprisonment. Whether he could be ex¬
pected to become violent or behave errati¬
cally . [He] said that he was asking this
question from the point of view of his respon¬
sibilities for guarding Nosenko. [The
psychiatrist] replied that such behavior
can take almost any form, that there may be
changes in physical behavior, eating and
sleeping habits, etc. He added that there
certainly has been a change in Nosenko since
the January 1966 examination, that he doesn't
know for certain what it means, and that there
surely is a risk that he may go out of his
head. [The principal case officer] pointed
out that [the psychiatrist's] remark about
the "annual physical" may have triggered this
reaction. [The psychiatrist] agreed, saying
that while he cannot dismiss true insanity
as a real possibility, he doesn't think that
this is what is going on right now.
[The Office of Security representative] next
commented that Nosenko is again asking for
reading material and asked [the principal
case officer] if he wanted to give him any.
[The principal case officer] replied absolutely
not and [the psychiatrist] concurred that no
changes should be made. [The Office of Security
representative] then asked whether Nosenko has
any sort of skin disease, pointing out that the
guards have to wash his shirts'two or three
times to get them clean. Both doctors said
that Nosenko is not afflicted as far as they
know and [the Office of Security representative]
asked whether it is still policy that Nosenko
is to have a clean change of clothes only once
a week. [The psychiatrist] expressed the opinion
that nothing should be changed, at least until '
after the examination on 1 March.
[The psychiatrist] remarked that things are
bound to change as far as Nosenko is concerned--
he is either going to stop faking or things will
get worse. [The principal case officer] added
that we (SR) are working hard on other sources
of information, that things seem optimistic
right now, and that this is no time to falter.
He added that Mr. Helms is keeping current of
the situation and goes along fully with
present plans, without changes.
[The psychiatrist was] asked what medication
Nosenko is now receiving. [The psychiatrist]
replied that he is getting 1/4 of a grain of
phenobarbital together with an antispasmodic
(for gas), which won't have any medical effect
on Nosenko's mental state. This is why, he
explained, he had instructed the base technician
to let Nosenko know that the medication will
help him. It can have no real effect and if
Nosenko suddenly improves, this will be added
confirmation that he is faking.
On 1 March 1966, the principal case officer and
and SR/CI representative accompanied the two doctors
to another examination of Nosenko. One doctor conducted
the examination, while the other members of the party
observed it on a television screen. None of the four
men gave much credence to Nosenko*s claim of hearing
voices, but the following was noted:
Though Nosenko's mental difficulties are
apparently a sham, it is also evident that
there has been a change in his outlook since
SR last had direct contact with him in August
1965. If by nothing else, this is evidenced
by the single fact that he has taken a new
. tack in his relationship with CIA: He has
apparently given up hope that his legend or
"another source" can help him escape his
predicament and, as [the psychiatrist] earlier
proposed, is using his "voices" (except for
which Nosenko claims to be sane) to force
some sort of change. For the first time in
the undersigned's recollection, Nosenko said
that he now knows that his CIA handling offi¬
cers will never (Nosenko's emphasis) believe
him beeause"~oT — his behavior and for other
reasons, and that there is nothing he can do
about it. But, beyond this, it is difficult
'1-00000
SECRET
-54-
to interpret the significance of his remarks ,
and behavior during [a second doctor's] inter¬
view- -on one hand there were indications of
deterioration; on the other Nosenko is an
astute actor, who was clearly playing a role
for [that doctor] . Bearing in mind that these
superficial indications may well be a part of
this act, Nosenko appeared far more subdued,
almost despondent, compared with six months
ago. For most of the interview, he slouched
or sat listlessly in his chair and only sel¬
dom did he lean forward and, by the motions
of his hands, attempt to reach and to secure ,<
the understanding and belief of the interviewer.
There appears to be a slight deterioration in
his English-language fluency (see transcript
below) and his replies were broken by frequent
pauses, incomplete sentences, and confusing
revisions.
Nosenko's changed outlook next took the form of two
letters to the principal case officer, written in mid-
April 1966 (although incorrectly dated, because by now
his calculation of the passage of time was no longer
completely accurate). The first, and briefer of the two,
read:
I ask you to excuse me for my baseness in 1962
and 1964. Now I have completely realized all
my delinquencies and have reevaluated my past
"life."
I want to live an exclusively honest and modest
life and I am ready to work in whatever place
that it may be possible, taking into account
my knowledge of Soviet Russia. I believe that
I have sufficient strength to live only a real
life.
I ask you to help me.
The second letter was even more self-accusatory, and
was clearly modeled after the self-criticisms exacted
from prisoners in the Soviet Union. It began:
My despicable behaviour from the beginning of
my acquaintance with you in 1962 led to it
1 '1-00000
SECRET
-55-
being necessary to create special conditions
for me and to assist me, which has finally
helped me to realize all my delinquencies
and mistakes and to reevaluate all my past
•'life."
I should have honestly told you everything
about myself, about my moral principles and
my life in Soviet Russia in order to start
a conscientious life in June 1962.
This letter next summarized Nosenko's career from
childhood until his arrival in the United States, and
admitted that although he had been documented "errone¬
ously” as a lieutenant colonel he had actually never
held a military rank higher than captain in the KGB.
It concluded:
Work in the KGB was the chief and deciding
period of my degradation--drunkenness,
debauchery, baseness, and falsehood.
I should have told you all about this in
1962 or in 1964, before flying to America.
I started my life in the United States of
America absolutely incorrectly. My behaviour
was base, dirty, and boorish.
The creation of isolated living conditions
and the appropriate assistance were necessary
for me. But I was unable to honestly and
directly tell everything about myself in
1964 or in 1965 , right up to the last con¬
versation with you. And only in 1966 did
I gradually begin to realize aAd to correctly
understand all my mistakes and delinquencies
and to think about my behaviour. And only
here was I able to reevaluate all my past
"life."
Now I can think correctly about real life
and work, and therefore I address myself to
you because you know me more and better than
anyone else, with the request to decide.the
question of my future life. By work against
the Communists, and only with real life, I
will try to justify the confidence placed in
me.
'1-00000
SECRET
-56-
The Chief, SR commented:
The letters themselves do not represent a com¬
plete break but they reveal that his defenses
are weakening and he may be seeking a way out.
He tells essentially the same story as before
but with more discrepancies of detail which
suggest further deterioration and, by this
time, an inability to recount his legend
consistently. The most significant change
is that he now admits he was only a Captain
in the KGB and not a Lt. Colonel. On the other
hand, this may be a prearranged fall-back posi¬
tion. ‘ We recall that [a Soviet agent] - -who,
in telling us repeatedly in 1964 of the importance
of Nosenko, said he was a Lt. Colinformed [us]
in February 1965 (after our doubts about Nosenko
had become well known and Nosenko himself had
possibly missed pre-arranged contacts with the
KGB) that [a Soviet agent] had heard that al¬
though Nosenko was a Deputy Department Chief,
he was only a Captain and not a Lt. Colonel.
On the other hand, there can be no doubt that
the rank of Lt. Col. was part of the KGB pre¬
pared legend for Nosenko, and not simply his
own improvisation. This is proved by the fact
that one of the personal documents that Nosenko
brought with him to Geneva in 1964 was a TDY
travel order which Nosenko claims to have used
to travel to Gorkiy . . . [and] was clearly a
deliberate plant by the KGB and there can be no
question of its being filled out erroneously.
Furthermore, the rank was necessary to sustain
the fiction of Nosenko's high supervisory posi¬
tions , which in turn were necessary to explain
his access to the information he claims to have.
Aside from the hope they offer for success in
breaking Nosenko, the most interesting aspect
of the letters is their tone. He does not com¬
plain of our treatment of him but on the con¬
trary expresses appreciation for it and says
that it was entirely justified. They are the
latest in a series of indications that Nosenko
is weakening. They follow an attempt to feign
insanity, an abortive hunger strike and some
erratic behaviour concerning his exercise period.
1 '1-00000
-57-
' V
We plan to answer him along the lines that
we are willing to forgive his "baseness and
falsehood" and discuss his rehabilitation
but only when he is prepared to drop the legend
which he seems to maintain in his letter. If
he is, as we think, getting desperate to get
out, he may reply with further admissions.
We have clarified the medical questions which
were delaying further interrogation. We are
now reviewing with Chief, TSD the proposals
discussed with you earlier concerning the use
of special interrogation techniques. The
attached letters afford an ideal opportunity
to resume discussions with Nosenko whenever
we wish.
(The reference to "special interrogation techniques"
harked back to a 13 January 1966 discussion with Helms,
during which the latter had stated that "he was inclined
to try special techniques on Subject in the hope that
they might somehow provide the answers we are seeking."
In this context, "special techniques" was a euphemism for
the use of drugs as aids in interrogation. As w ill be
shown__ later T . althoug h Helms was willing to dTs 'EuslIjthe'
usig ^of^such techniq ues in this case, he in fa ct never gav e
hOT’consent and they were never employed. Nevertheless, -•••
the use of drugs for interrogation purposes sje_e ms toZhave _
been - Contemplated for some time, since it is foreseen in
handwritten notes made by the principal case^officer as
early as November 1964, and Chief, SR and the principal
case officer continued to press for permission to employ
them until a final negative decision by Helms on 1 -
September 1966.)
On 26 April 1966, Chief, SR again wrote Helms to
say that a response to Nosenko 1 s letters had been delayed
in order to allow time for discussion with Chief, Cl and
the psychiatrist. Their combined judgment seems to have
been that the letters were "an attempt to relieve the
isolation by reestablishing personal contact, if only
with his interrogators." He bolstered this view by an
appeal to medical authority:
It is [the psychiatrist's] opinion, in which
we fully concur, that any such contact would
in fact constitute a relief for Nosenko and
that it would be a serious mistake to grant
-58-
him this at the very moment that his
psychological defenses may be cracking.
On the contrary, [the psychiatrist] feels
we should cut off any hopes Nosenko may
harbor that he can alter his present situa¬
tion without a full confession.
Since it is the technique of isolation and
rejection that has led to the recent promising
changes in Nosenko's attitude and behavior, we
believe that it is logical to continue along
the same lines and that there is a reasonable
expectation that this treatment will produce
further results in the near future. We
therefore intend to send Nosenko the attached
letter and to wait approximately 60 days before
changing our tactics.
The letter thereupon sent to Nosenko in the principal
case of f icer' s name read as follows:
I have received your letters and. so-called
"autobiography. M We understand fully what
degradation the Soviet system has forced you
into and as you have been told, we are willing
to help you establish a real life.
As I told you in August, however, we have no
further interest in reading or listening to
the legend (or its variations) that you con¬
tinue to repeat. We are only interested in
evidence that you really want to talk truth¬
fully"! In the future we will reply only to a
true written account of your life and how your
legend was prepared. Do not waste our time
with the lies of the past. This legend cannot
be the basis of a new life for you.
Chief, SR's next report, dated 11 May 1966, was the
following:
As previously agreed on 28 April, a brief note
was passed to Nosenko in response to his earlier
note and slightly amended biographical state¬
ment. He made no response upon receiving our
note (although he did not touch his meal that
night); but on the evening of 4 May he asked
'1-00000
SECRET
-59-
for a pencil and paper, indicating, in reply
to a question from the guard, that he had a
statement to make in response to our note.
After writing his note, he sealed it in an
envelope and gave it to the guard to be
delivered.
The note, written in English, states:
Allow me to thank you very much for your kind
letter. Now I understood fully what degrada¬
tion to the Soviet Russia had forced me into.
At last I can tell you that I really want to
talk 'truthfully.
I want to begin the job against the Soviet
Russia. My only wish is to establish a real
life with your help as you are willing to do
so.
[signed] George Nosenko
We have discussed his note with [the psychiatrist],
who feels that the final sentence of the
first paragraph probably reflects no real
desire on the part of Nosenko to talk truth¬
fully at this time, but is rather a further
attempt by him either to generate a personal
dialogue with us or at least to continue
this written exchange.
We feel that it would not be in our interest
to answer this latest note with another note,
thus permitting additional and, to Nosenko,
psychologically necessary contact and involve¬
ment- -albeit impersonal. In order to cut
off this effort on his part, but at the same
time to allow for the possibility that this -
latest note might actually convey an intention
to talk truthfully, we intend to deliver to
Nosenko the attached statement. The require¬
ment for direct "YES" or "NO” answers accom¬
panied by his signature allows for no mis¬
understanding of the questions and does not .
permit lengthy discourses on peripheral•
matters.
SECRET
-60-
[The psychiatrist] concurs in our plan and
recommends that it be carried out as soon as
possible to achieve maximum effect. If we
get a positive response we will follow up
immediately.
. In accordance with the above memorandum, the follow¬
ing form was passed to Nosenko on 13 May 1966, apparently
by the Security guards:
Answer "YES" or "NO":
1) Do you admit that you came to the United States
on a KGB mission?
YES [“] NO [“]
2) Are you ready to tell us about your KGB mission
and how your legend was prepared and taught
to you?
YES [ ] NO [ ]
Date _ Signed_
If the answers to both questions are "YES" someone
will come to talk to you. If not, there is no
need to write any more letters.
The next major maneuver on Nosenko*s part was a
hunger strike, in the course of which he lost some forty
pounds . This tactic was counteracted with the help of a
medical officer while administering a physical check-up
on 22 June 1966:
r- *
In the course of the examination, [this doctor]
questioned Subj ect on the reasons for his fast ■
and got him to admit that this was a deliberate -
tactic. As planned, the doctor showed no
concern, assured Subject that he was still in
good health, described to him in some detail
the physical and mental consequences of prolonged
undernourishment, and emphasized that Subj ect
would not be allowed to do himself any damage
in this manner. The doctors' description of some
of the standard methods of forced feeding and his
14-00000
SECRET
- 61 -
matter-of-fact emphasis that all appropriate
medical measures could and would be taken at
the present site made an instant and evident
impact on Subject, who nevertheless continued
to assert that he had no need or desire for
more food. (Despite the weight loss, the re¬
sults of the medical exam showed that Subject
is in good overall condition.)
On 23 June, the day following the doctor* s
visit, Subject began to eat ravenously and
he has been consuming all his meals since.
By 6 July he had gained 15 lbs.
The Agency * s next step was to have the principal
case officer see Nosenko. This interview, which took
place on 6 July 1966, lasted for about 45 minutes and
"was the first time that a case officer had talked to
Subj ect since he was moved . . . " The interview re¬
sulted in another stand-off, the principal case officer
insisting that Nosenko admit to being a KGB agent and
the latter refusing. Once again, however. Agency offi¬
cers in charge felt they were making progress:
[The psychiatrist], who monitored the entire
interview, was impressed by the fact that Subj ect
had used it solely to appeal to the pity and
sympathy of the interviewer, and felt that the
way in which the interview was conducted would
very effectively slam shut still another psycho¬
logical door. It is believed that for the first
time Subj ect has come to appreciate the measure
of our resolve and determination, and that he is
actively grappling with the realities of his
present situation. Subject * s pattern of behavior
over the past few months suggests that he will
need some time to fully digest the import of the
[principal case officer's] interview, but that
he will then be impelled to initiate some new
effort to releive (sic) his lot. Very few
alternatives short of confession--real or false--
appear to be left to him.
On 23 August 1966 Helms, who had become DCI on 30
June 1966, instructed the DDP and Chief, SR to close the
case "within about sixty days assuming there are no new
developments which would warrant reconsideration of this
development. " Chief, SR gave this account of Helms *
reasoning:
4-00000
SECRET
- 62 -
. . . the Director advised us that in his
view the time had come to consider disposal of
Subject. He was willing, he said, to proceed
with the immediate plans we had for the sodium
amytal interview and to consider proposals for
use of special techniques within the time frame
we suggested but unless these steps developed
new information or indicated definite progress
in resolving the case, he wanted us to wind it
up.
Helms' decision triggered a new rash of activity
within what was now the SB Division. Chief, SR, noting
that "there is no appeal . . . unless we uncover new,
compelling data," reconstituted a special Task Force
to work on the case, headed by the principal case officer.
A problem which the principal case officer found
particularly thorny, to judge by his notes, was posed by
the FBI's unwillingness to accept CIA's evaluation of
Nosenko.
Our case is based primarily on analysis, not
confirmed by juridically acceptable evidence,
and this analysis is so complex that it pro¬
bably could not be made more understandable
to laymen than it has been to the FBI, which
has largely failed to understand it.
Despite Helms' expressed preference for returning
Nosenko to Soviet hands, the principal case officer con¬
tinued to have misgivings about such a course:
Danger in the Nosenko case lies not only in
holding him, but in bringing his case to public
notice again, and especially in allowing the
Soviets to regain possess ion of him. (Our
denial of Nosenko to the Soviets, particularly
if they are in some doubt about his real
status/loyalty,, is a form of guarantee that
the Soviets cannot take the many damaging
actions available to them if they had the
body.) The course of action therefore must
balance the respective dangers.
SECRET
tcufr
-63-
Helms, op the other hand, hardened his position.
He was perhaps influenced by [the psychiatrist's]
pointing out that in his experience with sodium
amytal it had only worked once, and then by accident;
Helms promptly revoked his permission for use of this
drug. Helms remarked that Nosenko was "one person on
whom these techniques were never going to be used."
The upshot was that, on 1 September 1966, Helms
limited the interrogators to the polygraph in any
future interrogations, and reiterated his preference
for "having Subject turned back to the Soviets ..."
On 2 September, Chief, SB saw Helms again, to ask
that under' the new circumstances the sixty-day deadline
be extended. Helms agreed on an extension until the
end of the year. A discussion of a final report and
"disposal" then ensued, reported by Chief, SB as follows
. . . it would be imprudent I thought not to
have ready for any eventuality a detailed
study of our findings. This would provide
backup to our final report to the intelligence
community principals, the Secretary of State ,
Attorney General and others. In the case of
the FBI, I added, we would most certainly
have to have such a document. [This remark
stemmed from the fact that the FBI had never
fully agreed with the Agency’s views on
Nosenko.]
As for disposal, [Director Helms] believed
that return to Soviet control is the only
practical solution. Third country disposal
might only delay our having to face the same *
problems and if accusations are leveled at
the agency it would be far preferable to
have Subject in Soviet hands. The Director
did not believe the Soviets would refuse to
accept Subject and felt we could take the
sting out of any Soviet reaction by our own
statement concerning Subject* s mission. If
our position is publicized first, anything
the Soviets or anyone else says about the
case thereafter will have very little effect.
In the conclusion the Director emphasized the
need to bring this case to an end in a manner
which will permit us to arrange events and
timing to our advantage. He does not want
to be stampeded by publicity beyond our
control.
Interrogation of Nosenko, preparatory to the
preparation of the above-mentioned final report, was
recommenced on 18 October 1966. Assisting in the in¬
terrogation was the polygraph operator whose 1964
polygraph tapes were at this very time under review
by the Office of Security; on 1 November, thirteen
days later, they were officially and in writing
pronounced to have been invalid.
This is what Chief, SB had to report on 25 October
1966:
Nosenko knows he is reacting in sensitive
areas and this is worrying him because he is
not sure how much we know or how we learned
it. Nosenko* s reactions have given us hope
that we may be this procedure have begun to
Strike home. We do not know what it is that
keeps this man sitting month after month in
his present situation. We speculate that one
factor may be confidence that the KGB will
get him out. Related to this may be the
thought that the KGB has CIA so deeply pene¬
trated that it would be unhealthy for him
to confess. Our current line of interroga¬
tion , expanded and used even more forcefully,
might break down some of his obstacles to
confession by showing us in a different and
stronger posture.
Despite eight days of interrogation employing the
polygraph, however, SB Division did .not achieve their
goal: Nosenko did not ’’confess" to being a "provocateur."
Operating under the constraint of Helms’ injunction to
wind up the case by the end of the year, the principal
case officer made one last attempt to shatter Nosenko’s
resolution. In a long letter, the principal case officer
outlined the hopelessness of Nosenko’s situation and
adduced a number of proofs of Nosenko's prevarication,
derived in part from a fictitious "KGB officer . .. . sent
out as a provocateur" whom the SB Division leadership
invented for purposes of this letter. A possible tactical
error on their part, however, was the inclusion of informa
tion about Nosenko, ostensibly received from the notional
SECRET
-65-
source , which Nosenko himself would obviously recognize
as false: "He heard that you had been in prison in the
USSR, and that you received a Government award for your
meetings with us in 1962." According to the SB Division
officer who delivered the letter, Nosenko responded to
this allegation with a belly-laugh, but he certainly was
depressed, as his rambling remarks to the SB Division
emissary showed:
... I know about my lies and I corrected all
my false statements, my chattering. I know
everything what is necessary for me to know.
And I will be here, I understand this, I will
be here so many years as you will consider it '
necessary. You consider five ... I will be
five; you consider ten ... I will be ten.
I have no, I have no exit and I have no way
out of this situation, and . . .
InterrAgency Disagreement
Meanwhile, enormous effort went into preparation
of SB Division's "final report" on the case. This docu¬
ment, frequently referred to as the "thousand-page re¬
port," was described by Chief, SB as follows:
[It] will reflect all of AEFOXTROT'S state¬
ments concerning his personal life, alleged
KGB career and other matters as well as sub¬
sequent contradictions or denials of earlier
statements plus the results of our investiga¬
tions at home and abroad of these statements.
It will also cover statements pertaining to
AEFOXTROT made by various Soviet officials
some of whom have been or are now in opera¬
tional contact with the CS [Clandestine
Service] or the FBI. This factual portion
will be followed by analysis and conclusions.
The latter will be absolutely unequivocal on
these points:
a. AEFOXTROT is a dispatched
KGB agent whose contact with us and
ultimate defection were carried out
at KGB direction.
SECRET
14-00000
SECRET
- 66 -
b. AEFOXTROT's claim to service
in the KGB was an integral and vital
part of his KGB agent mission, forming
as it did the basis for all that he has
had to say about KGB operations and
personnel. Yet, the results of our
interrogations of AEFOXTROT supported
by polygraph examination demonstrate
conclusively that AEFOXTROT did not
and could not have served in any of the
specific staff positions he has described.
c. Whatever the ultimate goals
of this KGB operation might be, it has
been possible to determine that among
the most significant KGB aims in
• directing AEFOXTROT to us were: (1)
to persuade us of KGB ineptitude and
lack of success in developing technical
and human penetrations of the US
government, its security and intelli¬
gence services while at the same time
deliberately diverting these services
from specific areas of investigation
in which the KGB has been successful;
(2) to offer us leads to new sources
and new investigations which had they
all been pursued would have absorbed
our limited manpower in handling cases
in which ultimate control rested with
the KGB.
Preparation of the report was somewhat complicated
by disagreements between CIA and the FBI, as well as
between SB Division and Cl Staff within the Agency. The
intra-CIA disagreement stemmed from differing views on
the validity of Golitsyn information. Whereas SB Division
insisted that Nosenko, during his KGB career, had never
"served in any of the specific staff positions he has
described," Golitsyn had in some respects supported
Nosenko's claims regarding his KGB service. After a con¬
ference with Chief, Cl, the Chief, SR summed up the
problem on 29 March:
Chief, Cl said that he did not see how we could
submit a Final Report to the Bureau if it con¬
tained suggestions that Golitsyn had lied to us
about certain aspects of Nos enko's past. He
SECRET
SECRET
- 67 -
recalled that the Director of the FBI had stated
that in his opinion Golitsyn himself was a provo¬
cateur and penetration agent. On the other hand,
most FBI agents have accepted that when Golitsyn
was speaking on facts known to him he was accu¬
rate even though they do not accept most of his
hypotheses or inferences drawn from facts.
Chief, Cl went on to say that if we submitted
to the FBI a report on Nosenko in the form we
now have it, it would most certainly cause us
difficulties. It might cause us to lose whatever
impact our report would be able to make on the
overall question of Nosenko * s bona fides . . .
The disagreements between the Agency and the FBI were
never to be resolved as long as Nosenko remained within
the jurisdiction of the SB Division and the Cl Staff.
Within house, Chief, SR and Chief, Cl eventually papered
over their differences sufficiently to publish a second,
compromise report on the Nosenko case in February 1968.
But by then the case had been taken out of their hands ,
and the report was a dead letter even before it went to
press.
Voices of Dissent
Meanwhile, although the top leadership of SR Divis ion
remained unassailably certain of its thesis regarding
Nosenko as a KGB-dispatched agent, there was some dissent
at the lower levels. Manifestations of disagreement were
not well received by the leadership, however, and thus
had no effect on the handling of the case. A former
member of SR/CI remembers that it was sometimes possible
to discuss alternative ways of presenting very specific
points in preparing the written case against Nosenko
(which was eventually to become the so-called "thousand-
page paper") , but no qualification of the basic thesis
was tolerated.
The first recorded dissent, therefore, came from
outside SR Division, and it was a tentative one. A
senior Plans Directorate psychologist had been asked to
interview Nosenko in depth, which he did during a series
of meetings between 3 and 21 May 1965. As a result of
his questioning, he became convinced that at the very
least Nosenko was in fact Nosenko. Even this rather
SECRET
- 68 -
bland assertion, however, was met by Chief, SR with
the statement, "there are things in this case that
you do not know about." Nonetheless, in summing up
the sessions, the psychologist had this to say:
I am totally at a loss to even attempt to
rationalize why a story with this much
pathology would be used as a legend. Nothing
could be served other than to discredit the
man to whom it was assigned. In some remote
sense--to me--it might have been felt it would
evoke sympathy but this is really far out and
a very dangerous gamble on their part. The
manner in which he has told his story and
the nuances he has introduced would require
great ingenuity and preparation. From my
standpoint, he has been essentially convincing
and accurate in general if not always truthful
in detail. Here I am talking about the psycho¬
logical data only--I am not prepared to ex¬
press an opinion on other aspects. Within
whatever frame of reference I can operate, I
am forced to conclude that all the psycholog¬
ical evidence would indicate that he is Nosenko,
the son of Ivan Nosenko. His life story is
essentially as he has described it. It is
obviously distorted in places but in each case
there is a probable psychological reason for
the distortion and deception. No man is a
good reporter on himself and we all use
rationalization to avoid seeing ourselves as
others see us. My opinion, for whatever it
is worth, is that Nosenko cannot be broken
outside the context of his life story and
personality structure. It shoyld be noted
here that the life story is completely com¬
patible with the personality structure as
projected by psychological tests.
The psychologist claims now that he had more doubts
about the validity of the SR view of Nosenko than he
felt it wise to express. The following excerpt from a
memorandum of conversation, dated 4 August 1976, gives
his memory of the situation facing him:
In discussing his lengthy series of inter¬
views with Nosenko on 3-21 May 1965, [the
psychologist] said that he was very hesitant
i '1-00000
SECRET
-69-
to express the full extent of his doubts
about the theory that Nosenko was a KGB-
dispatched agent. The reason for his hesi¬
tation was that, when [Chief, SR] got a hint
of [the psychologist’s] doubts about the
theory, [Chief, SR] told [the psychologist]
that such doubts might make [the psychologist]
suspect of himself being involved in the KGB/
Nosenko plan.
There is no evidence in the files to indicate that
the psychologist * s doubts were accorded any impartial
consideration. Chief, SR, in a IS June 1965 memorandum
to Helms (who was by then DDCI, but still riding herd
on the case), described the interviews as "unrewarding
in terms of producing new information or insights . . .
It was obvious that Subject had given some thought . . .
to improving and smoothing over some of the rougher
spots in his story."
By the end of 1965, there were others in SR Division
who doubted the thesis, and one of them was willing to
risk his career by putting his thoughts on paper in a
31-page memorandum to Chief, SR commenting on a "sterile"
version of SR/CI's "notebook" documenting the case against
Nosenko. It began:
Introduction
At your request, I have read the basic Nosenko
notebook and I hope you will honor my right to
dissent. I find the evidence that Nosenko is a
bona fide defector far more convincing than the
evidence used in the notebook to condemn him as
a KGB agent.
*
It is because I am concerned about the serious
ramifications of a wrong verdict that I wish to
set forth my dissenting views in considerable
detail. If the present verdict of "guilty" is
right I believe there must be satisfactory
answers to the questions raised herein; if it is
wrong-- as I believe it is --it should be
rectified as soon as possible.
Intelligence Production
There are several references in the Nosenko note¬
book to the extent and quality of the intelligence
SECRET
'1-00000
SECRET
- 70 -
he provided. In the 25 March 1964 memo to
DDP, it is asserted that "A comparison of
his positive intelligence with that of other
Soviet Bloc intelligence officers with whom
we have had an operational relationship shows
that all of them were consistently better able
to provide useful positive intelligence than
has been Nosenko." Tab D of this same memo
states "His positive intelligence production
is practically niland later: "Viewed
overall, however, Nosenko's positive intelli¬
gence production has been so meager for a man
of his background, training and position as to
case doubts on his bona fides , without refer¬
ence to other criteria." All of these state¬
ments are incorrect.
The three persons in the Clandestine Services
with the background and experience to make such
a judgment regarding Nosenko's production and
access agree that they are incorrect. No KGB
officer has been able to provide more useful
intelligence than Nosenko has; experience has
shown that intelligence usefulness of KGB
officers in general is "practically nil."
Golitsyn's was nil. Viewed in the proper con¬
text, therefore, Nosenko's intelligence produc¬
tion cannot be used in his defense, but neither
can it be said honestly to cast any doubt what¬
soever on his bona fides . In the realm of sub¬
stance , j udgment regarding his bona fides must
therefore be made on the basis of his” counter -
intelligence information.
Counterintelligence Production
, , „"j r ,.r .. i 11 .^. * r " '" #
The ultimate conclusions about Nosenko's bona
fides, as of March 1964 DDP memo and others
indicate, must be based on his production--how
much did he hurt the Soviets. I believe that
the evidence shows that he has damaged the Soviet
intelligence effort more than all other KGB
defectors combined.
Chief, SR later wrote:
I have read this document and am of mixed minds.
First, it shows clearly that the so-called
SECRET
SECRET
- 71 -
"sterile M book in the hands of a person with
none of the other background on other cases
or appreciation of the penetration problems
affecting us and the FBI can be a very-
damaging document. I question seriously
whether we should make it available to
others in its present form. Second, the
book's weaknesses are principally its
language and the fact that it was made up
of memos from various periods and as our
evaluation matured, or we developed additional
information, the tone of the subsequent memos
changed but the reader can suggest our approach
has been superficial or inconsistent. Third,
we cannot make the book available unless we
are prepared to deal with the totality or
near totality of the picture. Fourth, if a
book is to be used at all in briefing individ¬
uals , it should be re-written and questions of
the kind posed by this . . . paper trrated [sic
no matter how irritating we find them to be.
if one person has this view, others might at
some point . . .
In replying to Chief, SR, another SR officer al
attempted to take a balanced view:
The paper suffers from many faults. These
include bias, intellectual arrogance, and
lack of Cl background. Needless to say, the
conclusions are false. Nevertheless, I found
it to be a useful paper, and I think that we
would be wise to treat it seriously, because
it does highlight some problems which we have
all been aware of for some timq.
It is inevitable, I suppose, that all of us
who contributed substantially to the black
books will feel personally attacked by many
of the uninformed judgments and intemperate
comments contained in [this] paper. I urge
that we all strive to overcome the temptation
to reply in kind. Despite the paper's short¬
comings , it is one reader's serious and sincere
response to the black book, and it reflects
some serious faults in the book which we must
correct.
SECRET
SECRET
- 72 -
This is not the first indication we have had
that some of our analytical methods, and
particularly the style and language we have
become addicted to, are not easily understood
by "outsiders." We have all been on this prob¬
lem so long that we’ve gotten into the habit
of taking mental shortcuts and using elliptical
proofs, considering the gaps and omissions to
be self-explanatory . . .
When the author of the dissenting paper wrote to
Helms on 4 April 1966, he included the following com¬
ments :
My primary reason for bringing the attached
bootleg copy of my memorandum to your atten¬
tion is the morbid effect that the Nosenko
case has, and will continue to have, on intel¬
ligence collection against the USSR by all
agencies of the US government. The accu¬
sations against Nosenko, which I believe to be
entirely false, have contaminated all current
agent operations against the USSR and most
of the past operations, ex post facto ...
Any case which we get from now on which sup¬
ports Nosenko, especially the GRU and KGB
cases, will likely be considered tainted.
Since all such good cases are bound to sup¬
port him, US intelligence faces a bleak
future. The explicit ramifications of the
concept of an all-powerful KGB, which can with
impunity present us one of their senior per¬
sonnel , or a knowledgeable facsimile, are
already apparent in the negative moods of CIA
personnel here and overseas.
Not long thereafter, Helms called the author by
phone and told him he was having a great deal of trouble
with the Nosenko case. He said that he was therefore
going to turn it over to the DDCI, who he hoped could
get to the bottom of it for him. Helms also asked the
author if he would agree to Helms’ passing his paper to
an Agency psychologist. A few days later, Helms again
called the author by phone and asked if he would agree
to his paper’s being passed to both the DDCI'and the
Director of Security.
SECRET
14-00000
SECRET
-73-
N. Helms Takes Control
With the third anniversary of Nosenko’s confinement
drawing near, no resolution of the case was yet in sight.
The FBI continued to take what Chief, SB described as a
’’neutral position" in regard to Nosenko.
The conflicting views of the various interested
parties are not sufficiently relevant to the purposes of
this study to require a detailed coverage. What is
relevant is the fact that the stand-off increased Helms’
impatience with continued delay. He therefore initiated
a number of measures that gradually took handling of the
entire Nosenko matter out of the hands of the SB Division.
The first of these measures was to instruct the DDCI to
undertake a thorough study of the Nosenko case.
When debriefed regarding the Nosenko case on 21
September 1976, the former DDCI remembered his involvement
as follows:
DDCII became concerned as a result of Dick Helms
[saying] that there was a matter that worried
him very deeply, that needed resolution, that he
doubted that there was enough objectivity amongst
the people in the Agency who handled it so far
to arrive at any kind of a really objective
solution to the problem, and it was very sensitive
indeed, would I please look into it and let him
know my conclusions. Then he went on to tell me
about Nosenko, the defector, who was at that
time incarcerated . . . And he mentioned that
there was a dichotomy of views in the DDP as to
whether Nosenko was a bona fide defector or whether
he had been sent on a missiop, and that in any
case he. Helms, felt that it'was wrong to keep
him confined and we had to do something with him
one way or the other.
Q: He said that it was wrong to keep him confined?
DDCI: Yes, he was really distressed about the fact that
this fellow had been in confinement so long and
that they had never been able to arrive at a con¬
clusion as to whether he was a bona fide or whether
he was a plant, and he just had to get it resolved
and something had to be done to get this fellow
in a . . . oh, I’ve forgotten just how he put it,
SECRET
14-00000
SECRET
-74-
but in a more acceptable position. So, I
said, yes, I would undertake this job and I
sent for all the background papers on it and
studied them first. Then I interviewed [Chief,
Cl and Chief, SB] and arrived at the conclu¬
sion ... I think I talked to some other
people in the Soviet Division of the DDP also,
but I arrived at the conclusion that people
had their feet so mired in concrete of opinion
as to one side or the other of the case, that
it was just damned near impossible to get any
worthwhile information out of interviews. And
I then wrote a memorandum to Helms in which I
indicated that I had, after reviewing the . . .
making a preliminary review of the case, that
I had considerable doubt that Nosenko was a
plant; if so, I couldn’t figure out what he was
planted for. Nor could I get out of anybody
else what he was supposed . . . what his mission
was supposed to be, even in their hypothesis . . .
. . . My second memorandum to Helms was to the
effect that, whatever the case, I didn’t believe
that Nosenko was any threat whatsoever to the
Agency, that he ought to be rehabilitated, and
I got a free hand from Helms to go ahead with
the idea of rehabilitating him. And [the Director
of Security] then had him moved . . .
Q: Well, do you remember anything about Dick Helms ?
reactions to your recommendations?
DDCI : He seemed rather pleased with the information.
I got the impress ion from discussing the case
with him that he never had been able to get what
he felt was a really fair appraisal of it from
anybody; and I got the impression that he felt
at last he had a fair appraisal of it.
On 26 May 1967, the DDCI called the Director of
Security to his office, and the Director of Security re¬
corded the meeting as follows:
[The DDCI] started by asking me whether or not
I had seen the eight hundred page report summarizing
the Soviet Bloc Division’s interrogation and ex¬
ploitation of [Nosenko]. I said that I had not
read it personally but that [a member] of my
Security Research Staff was now in the process
of reviewing it and commenting on selected por¬
tions of it. He then asked if I agreed with
its conclusions. I told him that I did not;
that it had been the consistent position of
this Office that while we did not, under any
circumstances, consider him bona fide, we were
not convinced that he was a provocation dis¬
patched by the KGB with a specific mission.
Rather, our position has always been that there
is something wrong with [Nosenko] and his story
but we do not know enough in order to make a
final- decision.
I went on to point out to the [DDCI] that I
had thought, and had so recommended on numerous
occasions in the past, that it would make a lot
of sense for [a member] of my Office to take
over the interrogation of [Nosenko] in order
to resolve several discrepancies that had always
concerned us. Further, I said that the polygraph
examination given [Nosenko] at the outset was
designed only to "break him" and was not an ob¬
jective polygraph examination designed to establish
or deny his bona fides . I indicated that the
Director had approved this idea but that I had
been unable to sell the idea to . . . SB Division.
[The DDCI] said that he thought this was an
excellent idea. He agreed with me that we had
everything to gain and nothing to lose through
such a course of action and that he would so
recommend to the Director. I pointed out to
him that one of the things that had always con¬
cerned us was that the Soviet Bloc Division had
never released any verbatim transcripts covering
their many interrogations of [Nosenko] and that
we could make our judgment only on the basis of
written summaries prepared by the Division.
Thus, acting under the DDCI•s orders, the Office of
Security transferred Nosenko to "a decent, respectable
safehouse." SB Division was cut out of the case, as was
the Cl Staff.
i '1-00000
SECRET
-76-
0. Resolution of the Case
The Office of Security took over the handling of
Nosenko in October 1967. The officer in charge immedi¬
ately inaugurated a rapid transition to normal living
conditions. Throughout this process, he found Nosenko
fully cooperative, and without any tendency toward
drunkenness or other aberrant behavior.
The following is a summary report prepared on 16
November 1967:
Nosenko was moved to his current location on
27 October 1967 and the first interview with
Nosenko occurred on 30 October. During the
first interview, particularly the first hour,
Nosenko was quite nervous and showed a certain
reticence to talk. This condition ameliorated
rapidly and it is considered that the current
situation is better than could have ever been
. anticipated in view of the conditions of his
previous confinement.
Nosenko on his first day indicated his complete
willingness to answer all questions and to write
his answers to questions on areas of specific
interest. It was determined that his English
is adequate both for interview and for prepara¬
tion of written material. Interviews are not
usually over two and a half hours a day, six
days a week, with Nosenko preparing from six to
ten pages of written material each day. Pre¬
pared material has included life history, in¬
dividual cases, trips of Nosenko, reason for
defection, and detailed drawings of pertinent
offices during his claimed period of KGB employ¬
ment .
There does not appear to be any impairment of
his memory. His current living conditions,
although physically secure, are luxurious com¬
pared to those he had been in during the past
three years and have resulted in a relaxation
of physical tension.
Definitive resolution of the complex problems in
this case will require a considerable period of
SECRET
SECRET
-77-
time for further interviews, preparation of
written material and a comparative analysis
against his previous statements and information
from other sources, interviews and investigation
Nosenko freely admits certain previous lies con¬
cerning a recall telegram while in Geneva and
having received certain awards or decorations.
All interviews with Nosenko are recorded and
transcripts of the interviews are being prepared
In addition, all written material from Nosenko
is being typed with certain explanatory re¬
marks ... In addition, the Deputy Director of
Central Intelligence has been orally briefed
by the Director of Security. As of the
present time, it is estimated that there are
1,000 pages of material completed or awaiting
completion. All of the finished material is
in a form which will permit dissemination to
the FBI in part or in toto when such dissemina¬
tion is considered appropriate.
Work thus far with Nosenko has resulted in a
clarification of certain areas of previous
controversy. As an example, it is considered
that there can be at this time little doubt
that Nosenko was in the KGB during the approxi¬
mate period which he claims to have been in
the KGB. The matter of the actual positions
held by Nosenko during the approximate 1953-
early 1964 period is not considered adequately
resolved at this time and any speculation con¬
cerning the dispatched agent aspects would be
completely premature.
If even a degree of optimism i§ realistic, it
is felt that the additional interviews and work
in the Nosenko case together with a detailed
comparative analysis of all information will
provide a firmer basis for a final conclusion
of the Nosenko problem. Nosenko has been very
responsive [to] the normal consideration he is
now receiving, e.g. , our current work with him,
and if it accomplishes nothing else, will at
least condition Nosenko more favorably for what¬
ever future action is taken relative to his dis¬
position.
SECRET
-78-
This questioning of Nosenko was paralleled by a
separate investigation conducted by the FBI. Results
were covered in two reports published at about the
same time, the FBI's on 20 September 1968 and the CIA
Office of Security’s on 1 October 1968.
The essence of the Office of Security’s findings
was expressed in a covering memorandum to the Director
of Security:
In brief, the conclusion of this summary is
that Nosenko is the person he claims to be,
that he held his claimed positions in the KGB
during 1953-January 1964, that Nosenko was
not dispatched by the KGB, and that his pre¬
vious lies and exaggerations are not actually
of material significance at this time.
The conclusions of the FBI report were more sweep¬
ing :
1. The current interrogations and collateral
inquiries have established a number of significant
omissions and inaccuracies in the February 1968
CIA paper and have invalidated the vast maj ority
of conclusions on which that paper relied to
discredit Nosenko.
2. The current interrogations and the poly¬
graph examination* disclosed no indication of
deception on the part Of Nosenko. He is know¬
ledgeable in the areas and to the extent he
should be; he furnished logical explanations
for acquisition of information which would not
normally have been accessible to him in his
claimed positions. There is no substantial
basis for doubting his bona fides as a defector.
3. The variety and volume of information
provided by Nosenko is such that it is considered
impossible that he acquired the information
only by KGB briefing. It is also illogical and
*Reference is being made by the FBI to the polygraph examina
tion of Nosenko performed by CIA between 2 and 6 August
1968 as part of the interrogation undertaken by the Office
of Security. •
SECRET
SECRET
- 79 -
implausible that the KGB would have dis¬
patched an officer of his caliber with in¬
structions to disclose the variety and volume
of valuable information furnished by him. No
compensatory obj ective is apparent.
4. The current interrogations show that
Nosenko is in possession of information not ,
previously obtained. In the interest of both
intelligence and counterintelligence agencies
of the government, interviews should be con¬
tinued to exhaust his knowledge.
5. There should be a thorough re-examina-
tion of all information and cases emanating from
Nosenko and other defectors where the decision
for action, or lack of action, was previously
influenced by the presumption that Nosenko was
not a bona fide defector.
Despite the above findings, the Cl Staff never gave
up its contention that Nosenko was a KGB-dispatched agent
On 31 January 1969, the Cl Staff argued that to accept
Nosenko' s bona fides mean/t repudiating Golitsyn, "the
only proven reliable source about the KGB for a period of
time which appears to be vital to both Nosenko and CIA."
An undated memorandum written by the Office of
Security officer in charge of Nosenko essentially brings
this chronicle to a close: /
Since April 1969, Nosenko has had his own private
residence and since June 1969, his own automobile.
Even prior to April 1969, Nosenko could have, if
he chose to do so, acted in a way seriously
adverse to the best interests of this Agency
since control was not of such a nature as to
preclude independent action by Nosenko.
It is the opinion of Agency representatives in
regular contact with Nosenko that he is genuinely
interested in maintaining the anonymity of his
current identity, that is, not becoming publicly
known as identical to Nosenko. As an example,
he was very interested in having a facial birth¬
mark removed. However, he has on numerous
occasions indicated his interest in participating
under the Nosenko identity in some action or
SECRET
SECRET
-80-
activity which would "hurt the KGB." Nosenko
considers that he has certain capabilities
and knowledge which could be useful in the
effort of the United States government against
the KGB. This interest has not been associated
with any particular curiosity in regard to the
activities of this Agency . . .
Nosenko has consistently expressed his deep
interest in obtaining United States citizen¬
ship as soon as possible. He realizes that
under normal circumstances, citizenship could
not be obtained until February 1974, but also
, is aware that citizenship can be obtained in
less than the normal waiting period by legisla¬
tive action.
Nosenko is considered by Agency personnel and
FBI personnel in contact with Nosenko to have
made an unusual adaptation to American life.
He lives like a normal American and has an
obvious pride in his home and personal effects.
His home life from all appearances is quite
calm. The fluency of Nosenko in the English
language has greatly increased and there is
no difficulty in understanding Nosenko or in
his ability to express his thoughts. Obviously
his accent and occasional incorrect sentence
structure (and misspelling of words) has not
been eliminated and probably will never be
entirely eliminated.
Nosenko continues to complete work assignments
expeditiously and with interest. As indicated
above, Nosenko is very interested in doing
"something active" which is understandable.
Full consideration should be given to this
interest since if properly controlled and
channeled, could be used in a way adverse to
the best interest of the KGB.
Nosenko has since become a United Stated citizen,
has married an American woman, continues to lead a normal
life, and works productively for the CIA.
SECRET
SECRET
-81-
• CHAPTER IV
Nosenko's Contribution: A Summary Evaluation
Any attempt to assess Nosenko’s value to the US govern¬
ment must begin by pointing out that he might well have been
able to contribute more had he been permitted to do so.
Unfortunately, we were unwilling to give serious considera¬
tion to his stated desire to assist us in making recruitments
of Soviet officials; we discounted Nosenko's suggestions
along this line as possibly part of a plan to embarrass the
US government. There is no telling what potential recruit¬
ment targets might have emerged had we, soon after Nosenko's
defection, briefed him with such targets in view.
In this part of our study, we therefore confine our¬
selves to a summary of the contributions that, despite con¬
siderable odds, Nosenko was able to make. Let us take them,
very briefly, one by one.
A. Information on KGB Personnel
The Office of Security's 1968 report summed up
Nosenko's contribution in this field as follows:
Nosenko has furnished information concerning
perhaps 2,000 KGB officers and 300 KGB agents
or operative contacts (here the terms agents
or operative contacts are used to refer to
Soviet nationals) , mainly in the Second Chief
Directorate or internal KGB organizations.
However, he has identified approximately 250
former or current First Chief Directorate
officers and there is a considerable exchange
of officers between the FCD and SCD. In
addition, numerous officers of the SCD and
other internal KGB organizations travel abroad
with delegations, tourist groups, and as
visitors to various major exhibitions such
as World's Fairs . It is impossible at this
time to estimate the number of KGB officers
identified by Nosenko who have been outside
the Soviet Bloc since his defection or who
will be out some time in the future.
SECRET
SECRET
-82-
There has been very little attempted exploi¬
tation of information furnished by Nosenko
concerning other KGB officers and, therefore,
the possible value of this information to
United States Intelligence cannot be esti¬
mated nor can the potential damage to the
KGB be estimated.
KGB Recruitment Efforts Against US Citizens
Most of Nosenko' s own operational experience with
the KGB involved efforts against US citizens, either
visitors to the USSR or members of the US embassy in
Moscow. As a result of this background, Nosenko was
able to provide some 238 identifications of, or leads
to, Americans in whom the KGB had displayed some interest
Some of the KGB operational efforts culminated in •
"recruitments" that, according to Nosenko, were more
statistical than real; the KGB played the numbers game,
for purposes of year-end reporting. Nonetheless ,
Nosenko's reporting did result in the uncovering of
certain US citizens genuinely working for Soviet intel¬
ligence :
1. US Army Sergeant Robert L. Johnson,
who had been recruited in 1953, was arrested
in 1965 on the basis of a Nosenko lead to an
agent assigned to a US military installation
outside Paris who was providing the KGB with
important documents as of 1962-1963. Johnson
was custodian of classified documents at Orly
Field Armed Forces Courier Transfer Station
during this period, and he provided documents
from there. Excerpts from a preliminary
damage assessment are included below:
The full extent of damage will only
be known when the current review of
documents by all affected agencies
is completed. The damage assessments
prepared by the military services, how¬
ever , based on a review of their docu¬
ments to date, indicate that as a re¬
sult of access to documents in the Orly
vault, the Soviets may have learned:
SECRET
i
SECRET
- 83 -
[a] . Details of the Single Inte¬
grated Operational Plan (SIOP) includ¬
ing the attack plans of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, the identity of Soviet
targets, the tactical plans of USAF
elements including weapons systems
and methods of delivery.
[b] . US Intelligence holdings on
Soviet military capabilities, atomic
energy production, weapons storage
facilities, industrial complexes and
order of battle.
[c] . Daily US Intelligence sum¬
maries including our comments and reports
. on military and political developments
around the world.
[d] . Comprehensive comparisons
of US and Soviet SAM Systems.
[e] . Indications of the scope and
success of the US national SIGINT effort.
[f] . A wealth of material for use
in crypto-analysis.
From these preliminary reports . . . it is
evident that Sgt. Johnson* s cooperation
with Soviet Intelligence has resulted in
most serious damage to US national security.
2. US Sergeant Dayle W. Smith, a "code machine
repairman" who confessed to haying been recruited
by the KGB while serving in Moscow during the period
1952-1954. Smith, while initially denying any con¬
tact with Soviets, finally admitted he had been
recruited and had passed information to them.
3. James A. Mintkenbaugh, formerly a member
of the US Armed Forces, later in the real estate
business as a civilian. In connection with
Nosenko* s lead to Johnson, Mintkenbaugh was inter¬
viewed after Mrs. Johnson identified him as a
friend of her husband's . Mintkenbaugh unexpectedly
volunteered that he, too, had been recruited, by
Johnson himself, to provide cover for and assist
SECRET
-00000
SECRET
-84-
the latter in his work on behalf of the KGB.
Mintkenbaugh described his KGB role as a
spotter, collaborator with Johnson in
clandestine photography of documents, and
later as a courier between Johnson and his
KGB handlers.
C. Moscow Microphones
In 1962, Golitsyn had in general terms reported on
the existence of microphones in the US embassy in Moscow.
This information was promptly sent to the Department of
State, but no action was taken; lack of specificity was
cited as one of the reasons. It was not until Nosenko's
more detailed information was communicated to the Depart¬
ment of State in March and June 1964 that action was
taken that led to the uncovering of a system of 52 micro¬
phones , beginning in April of that year. Of the micro¬
phones found, 42 were active at the time of discovery.
These- microphones covered most of the offices in the
embassy most significant from the Soviet standpoint.
D. William John Christopher Vassall
Nosenko, in June 1962, told us the KGB had an agent
in the British Admiralty. Though this information
eventually contributed to the arrest and conviction of
William John Christopher Vassall, CIA for some time
tended to give Golitsyn credit for this success.
The British counterintelligence service stated in
1976 that, although Vassall probably would " eventually "
have emerged as a "leading candidate" for suspicion as -
a result of the Golitsyn information, it was in fact
Nosenko’s information that "was to clinch the identifica¬
tion of Vassall as the spy."
The British added that "[Nosenko's] information
affecting UK interests seems to have been consistent with
his position and we cannot recall any indication in the
leads of UK interest that [Nosenko’s] object might have
been to mislead or deceive."
SECRET
'1-00000
SECRET
-85-
E. Leads to Foreign Nationals
Altogether, Nosenko. is estimated to have provided
some 200 identifications of, or leads to, foreign
nationals (including recruited agents) in some 36
countries in whom the KGB had an active interest.
F. Summary Evaluation
It is not feasible, within the terms of this study,
to make comparisons between Nosenko’s counterintelli¬
gence production and that of other similarly qualified
defectors.• Enough has been said, however, to demonstrate
on an absolute basis that, both in terms of quantity and
quality of information, Nosenko’s contribution was of
great value to the US government.
SECRET
SECRET
- 86 -
CHAPTER V
The Analytical Foundations of the "Monster Plot "
For the purposes of this study, we have not chosen to
duplicate the mammoth effort put into analyzing and validating
Kosenko*s information by the Office of Security in CIA and
by the FBI; we have reviewed their work and, can find no pos¬
sible reason to challenge their findings. There remains,
however, the question of how senior officials could have drawn
so many erroneous conclusions from data tendered by a source
whom we now believe to have been cooperative and acting in
good faith.
A. Lack of Systematic Interrogation
At no time between June 1962 and October 1967 was
Nosenko afforded the kind of systematic, objective, non-
hostile interrogation by well-informed professional in¬
telligence officers which had otherwise been standard
operating procedures in dealing with defectors and in-
place sources from Soviet and East European intelligence
services.
We now examine the manifestations and consequences
of this problem at various stages of the case.
1. June 1962 Meetings
The transcripts of the 1962 meetings reveal a
disastrous problem of communication:
--Nosenko spoke fair English, bpt he preferred to
use Russian for the sake of precision. He spoke
Russian very rapidly, and his voice ranged from
loud and dramatic to excited whispering.
--The senior case officer spoke fair Russian, but
he preferred to speak English when saying any¬
thing important. He was largely unable to fol¬
low Nosenko's "machine-gun style" of delivery
in Russian. Nosenko and the senior case officer
frequently interrupted one another at important
moments.
1 '1-00000
SECRET
-87-
--A second case officer, with native Russian,
arrived on the scene for the second meeting
filled with assurance derived from his involve¬
ment in two important operations concerning
CIA sources in Soviet Military Intelligence:
Popov from 1953 to 1958, and Penkovskiy (who ,
was still working in-place as of the June 1962
Nosenko meetings) . Unfortunately, the com¬
munication problem was exacerbated, not only
by the case officer’s showing off his know¬
ledge to Nosenko rather than listening to what
Nosenko had to say, but also by the case offi¬
cer’s inaccurate summarizations in English
rather than translations of Nosenko’s state¬
ments in Russian. ( This case officer’s presence
was justified by the fact that the senior case
officer could not cope with Nosenko's Russian,
but the second case officer distorted so much
of what was said that he was a barrier of com-
. munication.
The second meeting, the longest of the five,
was further disorganized by the fact that Nosenko
arrived half-drunk from partying the previous day
and most of the night. Even during the nearly eight-
hour interview, Nosenko continued to drink. This
point was consistently overlooked or ignored in later
examination of boastful claims Nosenko made during
this meeting; e.g., Nosenko personally handled the
Lange lie/Popov case, Nosenko personally ran the
operation against a US security officer, Nosenko
personally talked to a US code clerk to try to re¬
cruit him, etc. When confronted in hostile interroga¬
tions in 1964 and 1965 with these claims, he denied
personal participation in all three instances (other
than directing the code clerk case behind the scene)
and said that if he had said such things in 1962 it
was because he was either drunk or under very strong
tension at the time. Such explanations were not con¬
sidered acceptable by his interrogators, and the
claims were let stand as evidence of his mendacity.
While Nosenko provided a substantial amount
of information during these five meetings, there
was little or no follow-up questioning on most of it,
partly because of lack of time but also because of
the case officers’ lack of background on the KGB in
general and the Second Chief Directorate in particular.
Ignorance of the Second Chief Directorate was only to
SECRET
'1-00000
SECRET
- 88 -
be expected, of course, since Nosenko was the
first KGB officer ever to talk to CIA who had
spent his career in this component.
2. January-March 1964
The second series of meetings in Geneva, in
January and February 1964, were somewhat better
organized, but--given the already prevailing belief
that Nosenko was a KGB controlled agent--he was not
carefully questioned on the information he gave.
This was partly because it was considered of
primary importance not to reveal even by implica¬
tion how much we already knew, lest his mission
include elicitation of information CIA had received
from Golitsyn or other sources considered bona fide .
Debriefings in the United States after Nosenko*s
defection were similarly limited to noncontroversial
generalities and were not noteworthy for attention to
accuracy and detail. (Although most of the debrief¬
ings of this period were taped, none of these tapes
was ever transcribed. Notes were taken, and reports
were then written up on the basis of the notes.
This three-stage process did not always result in
an accurate vers ion of what had been said.)
3. April 1964-October 1966
The hostile confrontation that took place for
some two weeks in April 1964 cannot be considered
systematic interrogation; "shouting matches'* would
better characterize these sessions.
During one period--May to November 1964--Nosenko
was systematically debriefed in neutral fashion to
obtain additional information on leads to Americans
and other Westerners recruited by the KGB, in part to
meet requirements provided by the FBI. The other
two objectives of this debriefing period, of greater
importance to the CIA concerns in this case, were:
- - to obtain answers to questions posed in writing
by Golitsyn, whose aim was to trap Nosenko into
exposing his ignorance or "lies" about topics
Golitsyn considered central to Nosenko*s "KGB
missions."
i '1-00000
SECRET
-89-
-- to acquire fuller background on Nosenko’s
alleged duties and activities in his various
KGB positions in order to use his own informa¬
tion against him in the hostile interrogation
period that was to follow.
The January-March 1965 hostile interrogations
were carefully structured and systematic but were
not designed to collect information. The information
Nosenko provided in these sessions was consistently
and intentionally ignored, as the stated objectives
were to force Nosenko to agree with his interrogators
that (1) he did not know what he should have known
(according to CIA assumptions), and (2) that he had
not held the positions in the KGB that he claimed.
This objective was "successfully" achieved in the
eyes .of the interrogators by bringing Nosenko to
sign statements that purported to summarize his
statements of inadequacy of both knowledge and
performance in regard to each of the positions he
had held. Each time, in signing these so-called
"protocols," Nosenko objected that the way they
were worded distorted what he had said; however,
he acknowledged his inability to get his interroga¬
tor to listen to what he was trying to tell him and
therefore his inability to reword these papers in
any manner satisfactory to him. When given one key
"protocol" to sign--one that was a "confession"
that he had been sent by the KGB to deceive CIA,
and that he had lied purposely on behalf of the
KGB--he said that, if his signing this document
would serve some good purpose of CIA or of the US
government in general, he would do so, but only with
his interrogators’ clear understanding that the
entire "confession" was untrue. , Under these circum¬
stances , his interrogators declined to have him sign
this document. Thus this series of interrogations
failed in its ultimate obj ective--that of "breaking"
Nosenko.
Subsequent interrogation sessions were not con¬
structed to collect information any more than the
previous ones but were designed to collect further
damaging evidence of Nosenko*s ignorance about the
KGB and of the areas in his reporting to which he
was "most sensitive" and that therefore were most
revealing of his "true KGB missions." In sum, while
a greal deal of personnel time was spent in talking
SECRET
] '1-00000
SECRET
-90-
to Nosenko and a large amount of paper was
generated in consequence, the canons of proper
interrogation were rarely observed.
4. Time Devoted to Debriefing or Interrogation
A point that can easily be overlooked is that,
of the total period of Nosenko’s incarceration, a
relatively modest amount of time was devoted to
actually debriefing or interrogating him. The most
generous estimate we can make is that approximately
292 days were at least in part devoted to debriefing
or interrogating Nosenko, out of a total of 1,277
days’ incarceration. Thus, from the standpoint of
obtaining information, about 77 percent, or more
than three-quarters, of the detention period was
downtime.
B. Faulty Record of Conversations with Nosenko
the outcome of the Nosenko case was prejudiced at
the outset by the establishment of a faulty record.
Let us look first at what happened during the June
1962 meetings. The inadequacy of the principal case
officer’s Russian for use in an interrogation has already
been mentioned. The problem was exacerbated, however, by
the fact that he nonetheless took notes on what Nosenko *
is purported to have said, which became part of the of¬
ficial record without their being compared with tape
transcriptions by a more competent Russian linguist.
If anything, the role of the second case officer,
who had a native command of Russian .but little patience
with detail, simply compounded the errors. Returning
from Geneva on 15 June, the principal case officer on
18 June began to dictate, using his own notes, a series
of 30 memoranda covering highlights of the meetings as
he had understood them. These memoranda were reviewed
by the second case officer as they were typed, but he
made only minor additions' or corrections.
The so-called "transcripts of the tapes" from the
five meetings were then prepared by the second case of¬
ficer between the week of 19 June and mid-August 1962.
Contrary to the usual procedure, the second case officer
did not first transcribe from the tapes into the combination
SECRET
i
of Russian and English (predominantly Russian)
actually used in the meetings, and then make his
translations on the basis of transcriptions. Rather,
he dictated them into English directly, using the error -
filled memoranda of the principal case officer's for*
guidance" !
In March 1964 a KGB defector of 1954 vintage was
brought into the case to examine Nosenko's reporting
in terms of his own expertise on personalities, file
procedures, reorganizations, etc. He concentrated on
the early years of Nosenko's career, particularly 1952
and 1953. In a resultant memorandum dated 12 March 1964
he commented as follows:
The undersigned began work on this special project
by reviewing the taped recordings of the meetings
only', without reference to the meeting transcripts,
believing that it would be possible and preferable
to get all the necessary information and other
material firsthand in this way. From the begin¬
ning, however, it was obvious that this would be
very difficult, if not in many cases impossible;
the early tapes (Nos. 1-6 and especially No. 1)
were very poor in quality. (These are the tapes
for meetings No. 1 and 2.)
After proceeding thus far in a review of the
tapes, the undersigned then switched over and
began anew, reviewing the transcripts alone and
without reference to the tapes. This method
also quickly proved unsatisfactory; from his
memory of the discussions as actually presented
on the early tapes, although poorly reproduced
and hard to "catch," the undersigned soon was
able to tell that the transcrip'ts are, to say
the least, faulty.
A point-by-point review of the tapes and tran¬
scripts was then initiated and has been pursued
until the present time by the undersigned. In
the course of this review, a large number of
errors-- omissions and other discrepancies--
have been discovered scattered throughout the
transcript coverage of the meetings recorded on
the tapes.
i '1-00000
SECRET
-92-
It is impossible to make enduring pronounce¬
ments of the following type without knowing the
whole situation and being fully aware of all
the motives and factors --personal and profes¬
sional-- involved, yet it should be noted that
the undersigned in many places throughout the
records of the meetings has encountered examples
of what he would consider errors in the handling
and conduct of those meetings. Let it suffice
merely to register this point here; notes on
this subject will be drafted and presented in
later papers.
He then proceeded to cite nine major examples of
errors, omissions, distortions, and procedures characteristic
of the second case officer’s transcripts (and performance
during the meetings). He concluded by saying:
The foregoing present but a few examples of
errors, discrepancies, distortions, etc., to
be found throughout the transcripts. A com¬
plete report of all such errors, etc., will
be prepared upon request.
The "complete report" was never prepared, and it may
never have been requested.
Later, the first series of hostile interrogations of
Nosenko, beginning on 6 April 1964, was monitored by
the 1954 defector, who listened from an adjacent room.
On 17 April, Nosenko was challenged concerning a claim ‘
he had supposedly made in June 1962 (according to the
second case officer's "transcripts") that he in person
had recruited an American professor of Slavic languages
visiting in Bulgaria during the time Nosenko was on TDY
for briefing sessions with the Bulgarian internal coun¬
terintelligence service. Nosenko denied ever having
made such a claim and went into lengthy detail explaining
just what had happened. In effect, because by chance he
was in Sofia when the Bulgarians were planning their
operation against Professor Horace G. Lunt, he gave the
Bulgarians advice on how to go about the compromise opera¬
tion- - a homosexual one-- and how to handle the actual
confrontation and recruitment. Apparently as a result
of listening to Nosenko tell his story, and his vehement
denial of any claim to personal meetings with Lunt, the
1954 defector went back to the 1962 tape recordings and
SECRET
retranscribed exactly what Nosenko had said on the two
different occasions in 1962 when he had referred to
this case. The retranscription clearly verified
Nosenko's detail. Nonetheless, all subsequent papers
on the Nosenko bona fides question included reference
to his having claimed in 1962 that he recruited Lunt
in person. His denial of such a statement in all sessions
from 1964 onward was lost from sight.
In the course of the second series of hostile
interrogations in January-March 1965, a still further
discovery was made by the 1954 defector when Nosenko
was challenged on another "claim" supposedly made in
1962, which Nosenko also denied having made. Reviewing
the tape recording of the 1962 meeting in which the
alleged claim had been made, the 1954 defector once
again established that the record was erroneous, and
that Nosenko was right again.
Later in 1965, retranscription of the 1962 tapes
was begun, faithfully transcribing Russian when Russian
was used, and English when English was spoken. These
transcripts were not translated into full English,
however, until mid-1968 under the auspices of the Office
of Security reexamination of the entire Nosenko case.
In late 1968-early 1969, a line-by-line commentary
on the more significant discrepancies between the two
versions was prepared. It required some 35 pages to
cover only the major errors and the effects they had
had in supporting the charge that Nosenko was a false
defector who "lied" and "changed stories."
CIA Misapprehensions Regarding Nosenko* s Life Story
j
The first step in debriefing a new defector is to
obtain his most "perishable" information; i.e., positive
intelligence and important agent leads. The next step
usually is to obtain a biographic statement, highlight¬
ing his personal history, family members, education and
career.
In February 1964, all information relating to his
life story, collated from transcripts of meetings with
Nosenko (in Geneva, 1962 and 1964) , was presented in written
form to Nosenko for him to correct or expand upon. This
draft was so full of errors derived from defective
SECRET
-94-
transcripts that only in the most general terms did
it correspond to his actual statements. At this time,
however, Nosenko was restless, tense, and impatient
with the tedious interviews with which CIA was trying
to keep him occupied. It appears obvious that he paid
scant attention to the dates or terminology used in
this draft, because he made only one noticeable change:
he insisted on deletion of a statement attributed to him
to the effect that he had attended a one-year course in
counterintelligence at the beginning of his KGB career
(a mistake dating from the 1962 ''transcripts'* by the
second case officer). Given the volume of other
erroneous statements in this "biography" that he left
untouched,' one can only assume that he considered this
biography an exercise of no particular importance.
Whep hostile interrogations began on 6 April 1964,
the inaccurate biography was used as the base point for
measuring so-called "lies" about Nosenko's entire life
story. It therefore caused him to be accused time and
again, of "changing his stories."
One of the first wrangles that arose in the hostile
interrogations concerned his responses to questions on
his schooling. Among other aspects of this subject,
Nosenko told his interrogators that he had spent approxi -
mately three years during World War II in various naval
preparatory schools- - (rough equivalent of American high
school-level military "academies"). The problem that
arose in this instance was traceable first to a careless
transcription by the second case officer but was exacerbated
by ignorance on the part of the interrogators concerning
the subject under discussion. Because it typifies other
misapprehensions that complicate the Nosenko case, this
example is worth relating in detail *
The second case officer "transcribed" the tape of
the 25 January 1964 meeting in Geneva, quoting Nosenko
thus (underlining is ours):
. . . When I first came here I graduated from
the Institute of Foreign Relations. I specialized
in International Law and on the USA there. I
came to GRU in 1949. Before I attended this
Institute I was in a naval school. I also
studied in Baku in a navy preparatory school
and I even studied in Frunze. And then the war
SECRET
-95-
ended. The only time I participated in war¬
time activities was when heavy combat was going
on near Novorossiysk. They threw the students
from Baku into the battle.
After we lost Novorossiysk the remnants which
were somewhere between one third and one half
of the students were brought back to Baku. When
the war ended I had not yet graduated front Frunze
and I was demobilized . I didn’t want a military
career so I went to the Institute of Foreign
Relations in 1945 and graduated in 1949. Toward
the end of the year in early 1950 the placement
commission ( raspreditelnaya komissaya ) [words
missing in original transcript] where I wanted
to work. I said that I've had some military
experience and I’d rather have something along
that line rather than go to MID [Ministry of
Foreign Affairs]. They said I would be called
on the phone and they would let me know. I was
called up by the personnel section of the old
MGB.
To Nosenko's interrogators in April, "Frunze" meant
only one thing--the Frunze Naval Academy, equivalent to
the US Naval Academy at Annapolis. Unfortunately, the
naval preparatory school to which Nosenko referred was
named Frunze also; it was the prep school for those Soviet
boys with aspirations for naval command positions who
would later go on to the Frunze Naval Academy. i
When Nosenko was asked in April 1964 to discuss his
schooling, he referred to having entered a naval preparatory
school--at roughly the high school level, and in Russian
called a uchilishche . This was, sajd he, the Leningrad
Naval Preparatory School named after Frunze*. In 1942,
the school was relocated to Baku because of the fighting
around Leningrad. Nosenko's interrogators clearly did not
understand what he was talking about, as they had no back¬
ground on these naval preparatory schools; the only Frunze
they knew of was the Academy, and every time Nosenko men¬
tioned the prep school carrying Frunze's name confusion
*In the Russian language, the fact that a school•is named
after a great man is always made explicit. Thus, in Russian,
the George Washington University would be called the "University
named after George Washington."
i '1-00000
SECRET
-96-
erupted. At the end of several heated exchanges on this
topic, with the interlocutors invariably at cross pur¬
poses , the conclusion was reached that Nosenko had lied
in saying originally that he had attended the Frunze
Naval Academy. The claim was then made that he had been
made to admit that he had not done so. He then was ac¬
cused of telling stories, which were confused and contra¬
dictory , about the secondary schools he claimed to have
attended.
Asked repeatedly if he was then saying that he did
not attend the Frunze Academy, he consistently replied
no, it was the Frunze preparatory school. This discussion
was repeated several times during these interrogations,
without the problem area* s being resolved in the minds
of the interrogators.
Because of the lack of background on the part of
the interrogators, a memorandum for the record, dated 14
Ap ril 1964, Subject: "Interrogation of Yuriy I. Nosenko,
4-11 April 1964," contained the following relevant quota¬
tions (underlining is ours):
. . . On 10 April, Subj ect was interrogated in
the morning and afternoon for a total of nearly
five hours. Questioning covered his early
schooling, his studies at the Institute [of
International Relations], and his service in
the naval GRU, both in the Far East and in the
Baltic. Gaps and contradictions in his accounts
cast doubt on whether he was telling the truth
about the early years of his life and even
raised some possibility that we may not be
dealing with the real Nosenko . . .
. . . Under pressure, Subj ect admitted that he
had not entered the Frunze Higher Naval School
( Vysshaya Voyenno-Morskaya Shkola imeni Frunze )
in 1944, but that He" had merely attended the
Leningrad Naval Preparatory School ( Leningrad -
skoye Voyenno-Morskoye Podgotovitelnoye
Uchilishche) of the Frunze Higher Naval School.
His story now is that he attended the Moscow
Naval Special School ( Moskovskaya Spetsialnaya
V.M. Shkola) in Kuybyshev from 1941 to 1942,
then entered the Leningrad Naval Preparatory
School in Baku, completing two classes of this
school in Baku (1942-1943 and 1943-1944), and
SECRET
i '1-00000
SECRET
-97-
the third class in Leningrad (1944-1945).
Subject insists that he was given credit for
successfully completing each of the four years
of secondary schooling, but says that at the
end he had the equivalent of 10 years’ educa¬
tion. He can offer no explanation for the
discrepancy--by his chronology he would have
completed 11 years of schooling plus one year
of kindergarten. Subject has been very weak
in providing names of teachers and classmates
and descriptions of school layouts and curric¬
ulum for this period, particularly for the
period in Baku. It is interesting that
[Nikolay Artamonov*], who has identified pictures
of Subject as being identical with the son-of-a-
minister Nosenko whom he knew at the Leningrad
Naval Prep School in Leningrad in the period
1944-1946, has provided information about the
history and make-up of this school which is
incompatible** with Subject’s story, as is
[Artamonov’s] statement that Nosenko was a
class junior to [Artamonov] and would not have
graduated from the prep school until 1946.
Subj ect has never mentioned [Artamonov], and
has hot yet been challenged on this part of his
story.
Further compounding the confusion on this one subject
was the development of suspicion that Artamonov, cited in
the memorandum above, was himself not bona fide . This
doubt arose because Artamonov claimed to have known the
Nosenko in question, and, as shown in the paragraph cited
below from a 21 April 1964 summary of interrogations for
the second week, because his "own elementary and secondary
schooling is a curious parallel to Nosenko’s ..."
(underlining is ours). The following is quoted as an
excellent example of the reasoning process by which one
could at one and the same time be suspicions of Artamonov’s
bona fides because some of his information supported what
Nosenko said, while also citing his reporting as evidence
*Nikolay Artamonov is a Soviet naval officer who defected in
1959.
**This is not a true statement. Artamonov’s statements are
more confusing than clarifying. The possibility that
Artamonov’s memory might have been unclear was not considered
14-00000
SECRET
-98-
that Nosenko was lying because Artamonov’s memories of
the schools differed from Nosenko's :
. . '. Adding to the mystery of Nosenko*s war¬
time years is the information provided by
Nikolay Artamonov, the Soviet naval defector.
When Nosenko’s defection was first made public,
Artamonov volunteered the information that, if
this was the same Nosenko who was the son of a
minister, he had attended.school with him in
Leningrad. Later, when shown photographs of
Nosenko he positively identified him as the
same man he had known in Leningrad in the
period 1944 to 1946 and gratuitously provided
the names of six schoolmates from Leningrad
that Nosenko should remember because they were
prominent members of the student body there.
Nosenko was subsequently queried about three
of these names, but out of context and with
no indication of who and what they might be.
He immediately identified them as schoolmates,
but positively affirmed that two of them had
been the roommates in Kuybyshev in 1941-1942,
while the other had been in the school in Baku.
According to Nosenko, none had gone on to
Leningrad. Of the names provided by Artamonov,
Nosenko mentioned a fourth one independently,
but although he originally placed him in
Leningrad he later moved him to Kuybyshev and
stated categorically that he saw him for the
last time in Moscow in 1942, before going to
Leningrad. Artamonov, whose own elementary
and secondary schooling is a curious parallel
to Nosenko' s, has provided other information on
the schools and dates which Nosenko claims to
have attended which is incompatible with Nosenko’s
story but it has not been believed advisable to
requery Artamonov on this until we can be
certain that Artamonov is not deliberately
trying to substantiate Nosenko * s bona fides
according to a prearranged plan which misfired
owing to crossed signals or Nosenko's poor
memory.
In May 1965, in preparation for his own.set of inter¬
rogations , it apparently occurred to the 1954 defector
that the original "transcript" should be rechecked for
SECRET
accuracy (he was right). After transcribing it into
Russian first, he then transcribed it into English,
but with one unfortunate mischoice in wording. He
translated the Russian word "uchilishche" into English
as "academy." The Russian equivalent to the English
"academy" in the sense of a college-level institution
is "akademiya." The following is the 1954*s defector'
translation of meeting No. 3 on 25 January 1964:
Telling about his entrance into the Naval GRU,
Nosenko says: ... I went there ... I com¬
pleted the Institute of International Relations
in 1949. I studied in the Juridical Faculty,
i.e. ,* specialist in international law and spe¬
cializing in the US. Before the Institute, I
studied at the Naval Academy ( voyenno-morskoye
uchilishche ), etc. In the beginning, I was
still in the Special School ( spetsshkola ).
Following the Seventh Class of the School, I
then studied at the Preparatory School ( podgo -
tovitel'noye uchilishche ), was transferred to
the Frunze Academy [sic- - uchilishche ]. The
war ended. We weren't successful in getting
into battle. The only time they sent us in
was when we were in Baku. There was heavy
fighting near Tuapse. We students were sent
in near Nov., i.e., near Novorossiysk. There
was heavy fighting there. We took part in these
battles there and then returned when Novorossiysk
surrendered. Our health was gone: less than
one-half of one-third of all the students re¬
mained, and they sent us back to the school.
So, the war ended and I didn't finish Frunze
Academy [sic-- uchilishche ] after demobilization.
What to do? Be a soldier? I didn’t want to. '
Study? Where? I went to the Institute of
International Relations and entered it in 1945.
And I graduated from there in 1949-- the end of
1949 or the beginning of 1950. When the place¬
ment commission asked me where I wanted to work--
it is mandatory for the commission to ask--I
said that I was a military man and asked that
they give me something related to military.
To sum up, the following problems typical of the
whole case are evident in this episode:
SECRET
- 100 -
1. Nosenko had been misquoted in the
second case officer's transcript, because
the second case officer did not understand
what he was talking about.. He had referred
specifically to the "Leningrad Naval
Preparatory School named after Frunzea
fact once again uncovered by the 1954 defector's
rechecking of the meeting tape, but not until
May 1965. When Nosenko "admitted" to his
interrogators in April 1964 that he had not
attended the Academy, he didn't know this was
considered an admission; he never realized
his interrogators had thought he had made such
a claim.
2. In general, Nosenko's interrogators
overestimated their substantive background.
Nosenko's "stories" about the several naval
preparatory schools he had attended during the
war are difficult to follow, because war
.conditions brought about a number of reloca¬
tions of these schools: the Leningrad School
was relocated to Omsk oblast but was still
called Leningrad School; the Moscow School was
relocated first to Achinsk, then to Kuybyshev,
but was still the Moscow School, etc. Nosenko's
interrogators were almost totally ignorant of
these matters but did not know they were.
Because they were unable to follow his detailed
description of all these changes (documented
by other informed sources, including Soviet
historians) , they thought something was wrong
with Nosenko, not with themselves .
*
Errors or Omissions in Available CIA Headquarters
Records
In this category lie many of the causes of error
in building the cast against Nosenko. We are not
speaking here of transcript errors but rather of some¬
times quite understandable lacunae in CIA's collateral
records.
Two important examples concern John Abidian, the
State Department Security officer in Moscow who was,
according to Nosenko, an American for whom Nosenko was
operationally solely responsible.
SECRET
SECRET
- 101 -
One point at issue was whether Abidian employed
a maid in Moscow who would have been in a position to
treat Abidian's clothes with a so-called "thief powder"
used by the KGB to facilitate postal surveillance.
Nosenko claimed that there was such a maid, and that
her actions enabled the KGB to pick up three operational
letters Abidian mailed for CIA, when the powder activated
a sensor in the Soviet postal system.
The second point concerns the question of whether
Nosenko lied in claiming that Abidian cased a dead-drop
site in Moscow that we assumed Nosenko knew was crucial
to the KGB apprehension of Oleg Penkovskiy.
On the first point, CIA had no record of Abidian's
having a maid, because he did not formally hire one until
a few months after his last letter mailing for CIA. How¬
ever, the maid who served an American woman in the
embassy also informally took care of Abidian*s apartment
throughout the time period in question. Thus, we were
wrong, Nosenko was right.
The second point has yet to be subjected to con¬
firmation, but there is strong circumstantial evidence
that Abidian "cased" the Penkovskiy dead-drop site not
once, but twice. The CIA officer tasked with the first
casing had been too afraid to go himself, as ordered,
and therefore apparently prevailed upon Abidian to handle
the job for him. The report submitted by the case off-
cer, however, could lead the reader to believe that the
CIA man had carried out the first casing mission--under
circumstances and in the time period when, according to
Nosenko, Abidian handled the assignment.
Both these problems seems minor in and of themselves.
But they were not minor in the context of the inquisition
to which Nosenko was subjected. Rather, the discrepancies
involved were evoked, as was every other discrepancy
arising from whatever cause, to bolster the case against
him.
CIA Assumptions about the Second Chief Directorate
Lacking contemporary information on the organization,
responsibilities, policies and capabilities of the KGB's
Second Chief Directorate from knowledgeable sources
other than Nosenko, it was necessary for Nosenko’s
SECRET
SECRET
- 102 -
interrogators to extrapolate from pre-1954 defector
information plus that received from Goleniewski and
Golitsyn. Not one of the sources cited below by the
principal case officer had ever been regularly employed
in the Second Chief Directorate--except Nosenko.
In a memorandum of 20 October 1964, the principal
case officer set out to demonstrate at great length
that Nosenko's claim to the position of deputy chief of
the American Embassy Section between early 1960 and lat
1961 was. completely false. Having informed his readers
that this position was one of the most important in the
entire Second Chief Directorate, he then proceeded to
present a "job description" for it:
Functions of a KGB Deputy Section Chief : Within
this frameworkj an understanding" o"f""the functions
and responsibilities of any deputy chief of sec¬
tion in the KGB is important. The following
description of this position has been confirmed
by Deryabin, Rastvorov, Golitsyn, Goleniewski,
and even in large part by Nosenko when speaking
in general terms:
a. He must be broadly informed
on the section's operations and individual
case officer duties in order to act in
the chief's absence, when he assumes
responsibility for the entire section's
work.
b. He approves and retains monthly
schedules for planned use of safehouses
by the section.
c. He discusses agent meeting
schedules with individual case officers
and approves and then retains a list of
planned agent meetings for each case of¬
ficer on a monthly basis.
d. He approves the acquisition of
new agents and new safehouses and their
transfer from one operation to another.
e. He usually maintains liaison
with other KGB units on matters related
to the section's target.
SECRET
SECRET
-103-
f. Based on file reviews and
discussions with individual case offi¬
cers , he assigns priorities for the
operations that each case officer
handles.
g. He reviews and approves by
signature the periodic written reports,
general operational plans of the sec¬
tion, periodic section progress reports,
and specific operational proposals of
individual case officers which are re¬
quired by the KGB. If the department
*[sic--meant to read ’’section”] chief
signs these papers, the deputy chief
still reads them in order to keep him¬
self informed on the section's activity.
h. He assigns priorities for
processing microphone material and
telephone taps, for selecting targets
for surveillance, etc.
i. He participates directly in
important operational activities and
is often in contact with agents or
agent prospects. As a senior officer
responsible for the section's opera¬
tions , he or the section chief are
almost invariably present during the
compromise and recruitment of important
target individuals. He periodically
participates in control meetings with
the section's agents in order to check
on the development of individual opera¬
tions and case officer's performance.
Hostile interrogations in January 1965 produced a
different picture. Nosenko said that, as deputy section
chief, his principal responsibility was to supervise
operational activity against American embassy code
clerks. His detailed knowledge of this activity and
his description of innovative programs he had instituted
in this area of operations have, with few exceptions, been
fully verified by investigations and already.existing
collateral reporting.
SECRET
i '1-00000
SECRET
-104-
As for other aspects of his "job description,"
Nosenko said simply that he did whatever his chief
told him to do, and, while he granted that he did
from time to time perform some of the tasks outlined
above, he denied that he had any such fixed administra¬
tive responsibilities. He contended that the other
officers in the section were not children and did not
require that Nosenko teach them what to do and how to
do it.
The outline of the duties of a "deputy chief" was
erroneous, because it was based on a misinterpretation
of the Russian word zamestitel , the term Nosenko applied
to himself - when speaking his native language. When the
meaning of this terms was researched in 1968, a clear
distinction was drawn between the American and Soviet
conceptions of a "deputy":
"Zamestitelor "Deputy," in Soviet bureau¬
cratic practice and usage is not limited to
denoting what we think of as the number 2
in the office, but rather is a broader term
which can perhaps most accurately be
rendered in English as "assistant." Soviet
offices, at least at the higher levels,
commonly have several "Deputies"; some may
have five or six or even more. In keeping
with this multiplicity, the Soviet term does
not carry with it the same sense of responsi¬
bility and authority paralleling the Chief
and of automatic replacement as the American
term. The Soviet position of "Deputy" is
probably not as intimately associated with a
specific slot as is the American position
of Deputy, if indeed it is so associated at
all.
In addition, the outline of a "deputy chief's"
duties can be considered tendentious because it was de¬
signed to establish a criterion of knowledgeability that
Nosenko clearly did not meet. Had the principal case
officer examined the validity of the criterion more
closely, he could easily have determined for himself that
it was unrealistic.
How misleading the Agency' s misconceptions could be
was also brought out in a paper written by certain SB
SECRET
i '1-00000
i
SECRET
-105-
Division officers in January 1969. The following ex¬
cerpt is instructive:
[Officer No. 1] In the absence of a firm
informative base, we were obliged to formu¬
late a stereotype of the Second Chief
Directorate (SCD) against which to compare
Nosenko's information. That stereotype con¬
tains a variety of quite fixed assumptions
regarding the authority of the SCD in the
USSR, the extend of SCD cooperation with
the First Chief Directorate, and the manner
in which the SCD operates. Of particular
relevance, with respect to some anomalies
found in Nosenko*s statements, are assumptions
regarding the relative weight the SCD placed
on the recruitment of agents among foreigners
as compared to the control of foreigners, how
much the SCD itself might know of certain
events, and how much a specific SCD officer
.(Nosenko) should have known and recalled.
I believe that some of our assumptions are
too finely drawn, with the consequence that,
at least in some instances, Nosenko*s asser¬
tions have been improperly impugned.
[Officer No. 2] The SB Study is, I believe,
generally reflective of an exaggerated view
as to the overall capabilities of the SCD.
There are implicit judgments made that the
SCD had to be aware of certain things; there¬
fore , Nosenko should have known about them
in his various positions. For example, there
is some question in my mind as to the validity
of the assumption that KGB suryeillance of
Americans, even suspected CIA officers, is
such as to make it suspicious when Nosenko
is unaware of certain operational activities
these CIA officers are known to have performed.
This possibly exaggerated view is also apparent
when we question Nosenko * s ignorance of inci¬
dents that we know occurred and which we con¬
clude , or at least suppose s are KGB-inspired.
Finally, and possibly the most important, is
the question of control as opposed to
SECRET
SECRET
- 106 -
recruitment of American officials (excepting
code clerks). While these two missions are
not mutually exclusive, in either Nosenko's
or our eyes, many times (particularly in the
case of Abidian) we have faulted him for not
knowing information that would be significant
only in terms of interest in recruitment.
If control was the main interest, as in
Nosenko’s claim, it would appear appropriate
to judge Nosenko's information more in this
context (perhaps a comparison with the FBI's
mission with regard to Soviets would be help¬
ful) than in the context of CIA operations
against Soviets abroad. I sense that the
latter was the case.
Thus, largely because of the influence of Golitsyn,
the Agency greatly exaggerated the competence and, in¬
deed, the authority of the KGB. Even though this
defector' s claims were often extravagant, they were re¬
ceived with very little reserve by senior officials who
in turn applied them across-the-board. On a different
conceptual level, this pattern of exaggeration was applied
to individual positions within the KGB; since that organiza
tion was conceived as an all-seeing eye, it seemed to fol¬
low that individual officers within it would partake of
its omniscience. Such habits of thought, regrettably,
were self-reinforcing in a situation where the objective
of Cl analysis was not to uncover the truth, but rather
to prove that a particular present or former Soviet
official was part of a grand plot against the security
of the United States. It made possible constant exciting
discoveries of duplicity on the part of any Soviet source
who came under analysis, simply because he could rarely
ever measure up to our expectations J of what he ought to
have known, accomplished, or said.
The A Priori Assumption of Disinformation as Applied to
the Popov and Related Cases'
The remainder of this chapter is devoted to a
retrospective analysis of the Popov case and the involve¬
ment of Nosenko therein.
SECRET
'1-00000
SECRET
-107-
1. Prologue
It is ironic that both Nosenko and Golitsyn
should have become so involved in the retrospective
analysis of the Popov case, because neither knew a
great deal about it. Perhaps they would not have
become thus involved had it not been for the dis-
information hypothesis.
Some time after 19 June 1962 the principal case
officer was given access to tape transcripts of de¬
briefings of Anatoliy Golitsyn, the KGB officer who
had defected in Helsinki in December 1961. Debrief¬
ing of- Golitsyn had been going on for over six
months, compared with five relatively short, hec¬
tic conversations with Nosenko.
In a memorandum written by the principal case
officer dated 27 June 1962, the day after his inter¬
view with Golitsyn, he set forth his views on
'-Possible Control of [Nosenko]." He opened with a
statement: "Detailed study of [Golitsyn's] produc¬
tion in the light of [Nosenko's] has suggested the
possibility that [Nosenko] may be part of a major
Soviet dis information operation ..."
2. Implications of the Popov Case
Unfortunately for Nosenko he had, at the end
of his first meeting with the principal case officer
in 1962, said, "Tomorrow, I' 11 tell you how Popov
was caught." Feelings ran high over this case,
with which the principal case officer had been
personally concerned in a minor capacity.
Petr Popov was a CIA source within the GRU
from January 1953 to October 1959, when the KGB
rolled up the operation in Moscow. He was the most
important Soviet source CIA had ever had until the
advent of Penkovskiy in 1961. Therefore, any informa¬
tion Nosenko might have on how the KGB had learned
of Popov's clandestine cooperation with CIA was of
great interest.
In Nosenko's discussion of Popov's compromise,
he explained that, in January 1959, the KGB had had
SECRET
14-00000
-108-
under surveillance a member of the American
embassy in Moscow who, they were certain, was
a CIA officer--as
observed this man,
mailing a letter in Moscow, the KGB intercepted
the letter, found that it was addressed to Petr
Popov, and came to realize that this Soviet was
working for CIA. He was arrested soon there¬
after and sent under KGB direction to make
several clandestine meeting s with another CIA
officer , 1 T Finall y in October
1959 the KGB apprehended 1 _ I immediately
after such a meeting, with material in his
possession just received from Popov. The Popov
case was over.
Enter Golitsyn. Originally, his information
concerning the Popov case had been slight. As
of the time of his defection in 1961, he knew
or believed only that:
a. There had been an agent leak¬
ing Soviet military, political and intel¬
ligence information to the US.
b. When CIA officer _
was assigned to Moscow, he was going
there to handle "a special agent or mis¬
sion ..."
c. Surveillance of | | in Moscow
then led the KGB to Popov.
Nosenko, for his part, said much
but added that the KGB had been ; led to
through th eir surveillance of another
in Moscow, | \ Unfortunately, to the
principal case officer no statement meant what it
purported to mean. Under Golitsyn*s influence,
his doubts concerning Nosenko * s bona fides led to
the use of an analytical technique that he described
as trying "to read the case through a mirror to find
its implications if it is bad ..." By the time
this June 1962 memorandum was written, the principal
case officer had decided that the story of the Popov
compromise given by Nosenko was the primary area to
determine whether CIA itself had been penetrated by
the KGB.
the same t hing
officer
ind eed he was. When they
], clandestinely
SECRET
'1-00000
SECRET
-109-
Golitsyn's 1962 reporting on how Popov
was compromised, i.e., identified by name
through KGB surveillance of Langelle in Moscow
in 1959, varied from Nosenko's story only in the
name of the officer surveilled. The Golitsyn
report was actually completely omitted from a
17 April 1963 memorandum. (Why this omission
passed unnoticed is not explained in any records
in this case.) Yet when Golitsyn gave a com¬
pletely different story of the compromise in June
1964, after he had read all the Popov case
materials, this story became the Golitsyn gospel
and has remained so to this day in Golitsyn's
argumentation. We shall come to Golitsyn's 1964
version shortly, but first some additional back¬
ground is needed.
Since Nosenko had said that Popi
promised through KGB surveillance of_
"mirror" technique indicated that this was not
the case. The mental leap from this postulate
Iwas not the
was that if surveillance of_
cause of the compromise, then recruitment of
by the KGB was the logical possibility to be
plored.
had met a Soviet known to him
as Vladimir Komarov, who had spent nearly a year
assigned to , the Soviet embassy in Washington, DC.
'^reported meeting this Soviet in Moscow.
The man called Komarov was known to Golitsyn
and to Nosenko as Vyacheslav Kovshuk, a Second Chief
Directorate case officer who was chief of the sec¬
tion working against the American embassy, Moscow.
documented association with Komarov/
Kovshuk came to light immediately when name traces
were run on the Soviet. The same reporting docu¬
mented his one-time meeting with a friend of Komarov/
Kovshuk's--a TASS correspondent just returned from
Washington named Aleksandr Kislov.
Kislov, Nosenko had told CIA in 1962, was his
friend in the Soviet Disarmament Delegation in
Geneva with whom Nosenko had gotten drunk on several
occasions. Asked if Kislov was also a KGB officer,
Nosenko specifically denied that he was.
SECRET
14-00000
SECRET
- 110 -
A review of FBI reporting on Komarov/Kovshuk’s
TDY in Washington brought to light a close regular
association with Kislov, in company with a number
of identified KGB officers, leading to a strong
circumstantial case that, contrary to Nosenko*s
denial, Kislo
contact with
by Komarov/Kovshuk, was therefore held to be not
a coincidence but:
We cannot find a convenient explanation
for Kislov’s role in this theory, but
it appears significant . . .
A further twist concerned Golitsyn* s and
Nosenko’s reporting on Komarov/Kovshuk*s TDY to
Washington. Both sources agreed that it was re¬
lated to recruitment of an American who had earlier
served in the Moscow embassy (speculation by Golitsyn)
or reactivation of an American already recruited
in Moscow (also Golitsyn speculation; but state¬
ment of fact by Nosenko, supplemented with specific
details that would eventually lead to identifica¬
tion of the agent).
Nosenko said Kovshuk came to Washington to
reactivate a code machine mechanic , KGB code name
"ANDREY," who had been recruited and had worked in
Moscow in the early fifties. In the first Geneva
cable of 9 June 1962 , in the principal case officer’s
memoranda, and throughout the second case officer’s
’’transcripts" of 1962, this agent was consistently
misdescribed as a garage mechanic, although Nosenko
in fact always called him a code machine mechanic.
Thanks to this major error in notes and transcription,
the FBI was hindered in its investigation of this
lead until Nosenko corrected our misconception in
January 1964. The FBI already had located the one
possible candidate for this lead but could not
actively pursue the investigation until this con¬
fusion was cleared up. By December 1965, they
finally succeeded in obtaining a limited confession
from a code machine mechanic who had been at the
American embassy, Moscow, from 1952 to 1954, and
this confirmed the essentials of Nosenko?s reporting
of 1962.
SECRET
a KGB officer. His
in Moscow, introduced
14-00000
SECRET
- 111 -
3. Impact of Penkovskiy* s Arrest on "Popov Compromise
Theory"
Without our going into details on the Penkovskiy
case, it is important to know that in October 1962,
only four months after the first Nosenko meetings,
the KGB dramatically announced the arrest of another
penetration of the GRU--Colonel Oleg Penkovskiy.
This was yet another blow to CIA, even more serious
than the Popov arrest, and a great deal of worried
thought was given to the cause of Penkovskiy*s ex¬
posure.
Penkovskiy's arrest heightened the suspicions
within CIA--especially Soviet Russian Division--
that there must be a KGB penetration of CIA for
two such calamities to have occurred within three
years. When in April 1963 a KGB officer, working
within the KGB as a Western agent, reported that
Penkovskiy (like Popov) had been exposed to the
KGB through its omnipresent surveillance in Moscow,
senior SR Division officers interpreted this report
as proof of KGB disinformation designed to conceal
KGB penetration of CIA.
4. Golitsyn 1 s 1964 Story
In June 1964, while commenting on Nosenko * s
version of the Popov compromise, Golitsyn stated
that the KGB report he had referred to in 1962
stated that the KGB did not consider running Popov
as a double because he could not be trusted. He
then went on to give a completely new story of the
Popov compromise, diametrically opposite to his
original information.
Golitsyn stated then that a certain Kotov
(first name not given), who had been in the KGB
in Vienna during the period Popov was there, sus¬
pected Popov of being a Western agent and made
known his suspicions. At the time, no action was
taken by Kotov's superiors. In 1957 or 1958, how¬
ever, when the KGB received similar information
from another source, Kotov was sent to Germany be¬
cause he knew Popov and was familiar with his back-
. ground. (Contrary to his 1962 report, Golitsyn here
implied strongly that Popov, by name, was identified
SECRET
J
SECRET
- 112 -
by the KGB as a CIA agent in Berlin in 1957
or 1958.) Golitsyn’s 1964 story must be evaluated
within the framework of the facts that follow.
On 21 November 1963, Chief, SR recorded the
passage to Golitsyn, through the Cl Staff, of all
materials passed to CIA by Popov, including
English language transcripts of all operational
meetings held with Popov in Vienna in 1953-1955
and all operational meetings held with him in
Berlin 1957-1958. Thus, by the time Golitsyn
was commenting on Nosenko’s version of the Popov
compromise in June 1964, he had become aware of
everything Popov had told CIA, specifically what
was going on in Berlin in 1957 and 1958. This
included Popov's mention of a KGB officer named
Kotov, who arrived a week or two before Popov
was recalled to Moscow, and another KGB officer
named Zhukov, who had worked against the Yugoslav
target at the same time that Popov worked on this
target for the GRU in Vienna. In view of the fact
that Golitsyn's story in June 1964 varied drastically
from that he had told in March 1962, it is legitimate
to suspect that he had recreated a story of Popov's
compromise based on deductions he had made after
reading the Popov transcripts. Thus, the 1964
decision must be thrown out of court.
The Hypothesis that CIA was Penetrated
Unfortunately for the course of events in the
Nosenko case, it was Golitsyn’s 1962 version that
was ignored in favor of his "facts" of 1964, which
condemned Nosenko’s story as strongly as his 1962
version had supported Nosenko. ,The reason for this
is obvious. ■ The Popov compromise hypothesis had
been feeding on itself for so long that it had come
to be treated as fact, with the result that the sub-
ject of Popov’s compromise became a kind of 1itmus
paper test of every Soviet source. If a Soviet
source reporting to CIA on Popov agreed with Nosenko
that KGB surveillance, rather than a KGB agent--
a penetration of CIA--had compromised Popov, then
that Soviet source was held to be a part of an ever¬
growing massive KGB conspiracy to protect penetration (s)•
of CIA. By further extension, Nosenko’s failure to
produce evidence that Popov and Penkovskiy had been
SECRET
SECRET
-112a-
compromised by a KGB penetration of CIA was
interpreted as proof that indeed such a penetra¬
tion must exist.
The acceptance of Golitsyn's story in turn
guaranteed not only that Nosenko could never be
seen as bona fide , but also that all other Soviet
sources iiiust Fe considered suspect if they supported
Nosenko's story. The overall result was to distort
seriously for a number of years the ability of the
Soviet Bloc Division accurately to evaluate the bona
fides of any defector or agent.
SECRET
i '1-00000
SECRET
-113-
CHAPTER VI
Dezinformatsiya: Origins of the Concept and
Application in the Nosenko Case
There can be little doubt that the handling Nosenko
received as a supposed dispatched agent would not have taken
place precisely as it did had it not been for the Soviet in¬
telligence practice known as dezinformatsiya . Furthermore,
the timing of Nosenko * s defection, some months after that of
Golitsyn, the fact that Nosenko provided information on some
of the same or similar persons or leads as had Golitsyn, and
Golitsyn*s conclusion that Nosenko had been dispatched by the
KGB specifically to discredit him (Golitsyn) as part of a
dezinformatsiya operation--all these factors combined to
preclude "normal" professional treatment of Nosenko. As a
defector, Nosenko * s bona fides should have been established,
or not established, on the basis of careful and sound
analysis and investigation of the information he provided
under standard interrogation procedures. In actuality, he
came under suspicion as a KGB-controlled agent long before
he presented himself as a defector, and his handling was
therefore based upon this prejudgment.
Dezinformatsiya is a Soviet concept and practice of
long standing thathas been defined or described by numerous
sources through the years. Two representative definitions
are as follows: '
Petr Deryabin : Dezinformatsiya is the
deliberate and purposeful dissemination of false
information regarding accomplished facts and/or
intentions, plans of action, etc. , for the pur¬
pose of misleading the enemy. Such disseminations
may be accomplished by means of the press, radio
and television, agent reports and communications,
operations, etc. The term also refers to the in¬
formation itself.
Anatoliy Golitsyn : In Soviet parlance, the
term dezinformatsiya is used to denote false, in¬
complete^ - mTsTFadfing information passed, fed or
confirmed to opposition services for the purpose ’
of causing these services (and their governments)
to reach erroneous conclusions regarding the USSR
or inducing them to undertake action beneficial to
the USSR.
SECRET
1 '1-00000
SECRET
-114-
By means of dezinformatsiya , again according to
Golitsyn, the Soviet government hopes to ensure that the
policy decisions of a given country will be based on a false
impression of the USSR's domestic or military posture.
Specific measures taken to achieve this end might be designed
to induce a foreign country to engage in costly and useless
research projects, to create a misconception about or adversely
affect the stature of another country in the eyes of the world,
to remove by nonviolent means, such as publicly discrediting,
individuals who are considered a threat to the national
interests of the USSR, or to weaken or dissolve, create or
strengthen certain political parties.
With regard to the definitions quoted above, Deryabin,
Golitsyn and others have spoken from knowledge gained as Soviet
state security officers. However, implicit in all definitions
is the fact that dezinformatsiya is not an activity that is
the exclusive prerogative of the security organs. It has
always been carried out as a matter of government policy, as
an activity that at times may involve the security organs.
Before 1959, there was no separate dezinformatsiya de¬
partment within the KGB (or its predecessor organizations),
although establishment of such a unit had been discussed from
time to time. Each geographic component handling foreign
intelligence operations was responsible for dezinformatsiya
work within its own sphere of activity. All such work was
carried out with the approval of higher authorities within
the KGB, frequently in consultation with the Ministries of
Foreign Affairs and Defense, and even in many instances with
the specific approval of the Central Committee of the CPSU.
It was not until 1959 that responsibility for dezinformatsiya
insofar as it was to be the concern of the First (foreign ’
intelligence) Chief Directorate of the KGB was centralized
within that unit, and not until 1961 that the concept of
dezinformatsiya played any significant role in the thinking
of CIA counterintelligence officers.
The dezinformatsiya concept was first highlighted for
CIA by the senior Polish UB officer, Michal Goleniewski, who
initially provided information by anonymous correspondence
starting in 1958 and later while under interrogation follow¬
ing his defection in January 1961. The information he provided
was of major significance, as he had dealt with the KGB on the
subject of dezinformatsiya from as early as 1953-and was in
fact not only a ranking Polish intelligence officer but also
a KGB agent. While Goleniewski was not the first source to
refer to dezinformatsiya , he was the first to bring it to
SECRET
SECRET
- 115 -
CIA consciousness as a technique to be reckoned with in our
analysis of the USSR's foreign policy. It was his claim
that the Soviet intelligence and counterintelligence ser¬
vices played a major role in the implementation of such
policies.
Specifically, Goleniewski provided information that was
to serve as the basis for premises as to what the KGB would
do upon learning of the defection of a KGB officer.
Goleniewski stated that one of the many obj ectives of KGB
dezinformatsiya was the protection of Soviet agents by means
of action designed to mislead Western security services. He
listed among specific objectives and types of dezinformatsiya
operations those designed to confirm unimportant true informa-
tion, thus establishing in the eyes of the opposition the
reliability of a channel through which the KGB passes mislead¬
ing information to anti-Soviet governments.
Conversely, another type of dezinformatsiya operation
might be designed to discredit accurate information of signi¬
ficance received by the opposition through sources not under
Soviet control, e.g., defectors, thus casting doubt on the
veracity of the source or sources of this true information.
Goleniewski stated further that the information passed
through dezinformatsiya channels could be based on analysis
of what was already known about any sensitive items, i .e.,
could stem from defector damage assessments. One means
obviously might be the channeling of information at variance
with that provided by the defector. Another means might be
the provision of "give away" material, which neither added
to information already in the hands of the opposition nor,
by the same token, did any particular damage to the KGB.
In extreme cases, the KGB would be willing to sacrifice some
of their own agent assets in the interest of enhancing the
reputation of an agent penetration of one of the anti-Communist
intelligence services. (That this latter technique was used
to advantage by the KGB in building Heinz Felfe as .a pene¬
tration agent within the German Intelligence Service has been
assumed in most analyses of that case. Felfe was a KGB agent
for all of the ten years he worked for the German Intelli¬
gence Service, from 1951 until his arrest in 1961. During
this period Felfe was able to work his way up to the position
of chief of the Soviet Section of the German counterintelli¬
gence staff. It has been postulated that Felfe* s rise in the
German intelligence ranks was assisted by the KGB, which was
willing to sacrifice less important agent assets to enhance
Felfe's reputation and position as their long-term penetration
agent.
SECRET
SECRET
-116-
In all its essentials, the information provided by
Goleniewski was confirmed and elaborated upon by Golitsyn,
who defected in December 1961 and who was the first significant
Soviet or Soviet Bloc defector to come into CIA hands after
Goleniewski. In addition to the general definition of
dezinformatsiya quoted above, Golitsyn said that a KGB (or
GRUj defector* s file would be sent to the KGB dezinformatsiya
unit; the latter would search for opportunities to exploit
the situation, after review of the probable areas of informa¬
tion revealed to the opposition by the defector. He indicated
in this connection that the Disinformation Department of the
KGB maintained extensive files organized on a topical basis,
containing all information on a given topic that was known
(from the debriefing of defectors to the Soviets, double
agents, captured agents, etc.) to be in the hands of opposi¬
tion intelligence services. For example, a KGB officer
assigned to Beirut to work against the American embassy who
defected to CIA would be assumed by the KGB Department of
Disinformation to have told CIA everything he knew about
KGB operations against the embassy and embassy personnel.
By reference to their files on Beirut operations, the Depart¬
ment of Disinformation would be able to determine the extent
to which KGB operations in that area had been compromised to
CIA.
On the basis of the foregoing information, it might be
assumed that the Golitsyn and Nosenko defections would have
received similar handling by the KGB Department of Disinforma¬
tion and by CIA upon their arrival as defectors to the West.
However, the two men were not similarly received by CIA when
they presented themselves as defectors; they received com¬
pletely different handling, based on quite different assess¬
ment of the information they provided and their motives for ■
defecting. Golitsyn was accepted as a bona fide defector in
relatively short order, while Nosenko was speedily rejected
as a bona fide defector, as explained below.
Golitsyn, an officer of the First Chief Directorate of
the KGB, defected to CIA in Helsinki in mid-December 1961.
Information that he provided relating to the organization
and structure of the KGB was accepted as factual and true,
at least in part because there was relatively little record
information against which it could be compared, but also
because the information appeared to be logical and reasonable.
In addition, he provided voluminous and valuable.information
on KGB personalities; available CIA file holdings were
limited, but the information provided by Golitsyn proved to
SECRET
i '1-00000
SECRET
-117-
be accurate to the extent it could be checked against these
holdings. Finally, he provided a theory of KGB operations
that was not only accepted at face value but received with
outright enthusiasm. Given the value of his information,
plus his apparent motivation for defecting, which included
an obsession with the evil inherent in the KGB and an
emphatically-stated wish to "fight against the KGBhis bona
fides was accepted in March 1962.
The reception accorded Nosenko, after he defected in
1964, has already been recorded in detail. That Nosenko did
not receive standard treatment as a defector whose bona fides
would be determined on the basis of the information he pro-
vided under interrogation after defection inevitably involves
reference to Golitsyn. As explained in Chapter III, Golitsyn
himself played a curious role in that, as a result of the
trust placed .in his judgment, he was actually encouraged to
label Nosenko as a deception agent.
This situation arose as follows: During initial contacts
with CIA in 1962, Nosenko provided information on personalities
that was similar to that provided a few months earlier by
Golitsyn. Because CIA counterintelligence officers had been
warned by Goleniewski that they should not be "taken in" by
false information fed to them through no matter what channels,
the "duplication" or "overlapping" information given by Nosenko
was viewed with extreme suspicion. This original doubt led
to information provided by Nosenko being shown to Golitsyn
soon after the former * s defection. The paranoid Golitsyn
immediately saw Nosenko as a person sent out to discredit or
even assassinate him.
Thereafter, the desire of CIA counterintelligence offi¬
cers not to be outwitted by the KGB led them to apply an ana¬
lytical technique that has been referred to variously as "double
think" or "mirror reading." This "analysis" led to the con¬
clusion that Nosenko, as a dispatched agent, was feeding us
what the KGB wanted us to believe. Thus, everything Nosenko
said had to be "interpreted." If he said that the KGB had
been unable to recruit any Americans serving at the US embassy
in Moscow during a given period, this meant that the KGB had
been quite successful in doing so. If he provided information
on a given topic that we had already received from another
source, this meant that the KGB wanted us to believe that
particular piece of information, hence the other•source un¬
doubtedly was a KGB agent as well. And so on. Facts were
discarded or ignored when they did not fit the hypothesis
SECRET
14-00000
SECRET
-118-
that Nosenko was a dispatched agent. Any other sources
whose information confirmed, tended to confirm, or dealt
with any of the topics mentioned by Nosenko were regarded
as ’'contaminated"--that is to say, they were considered
part of the same dezinformatsiya plot in which Nosenko
figured.
Golitsyn played a major role in this "analytical pro¬
cess ." As soon as Nosenko's defection became public,
Golitsyn asked whether he could participate in Nosenko's
interrogation. As of 20 February 1964 the DDP had agreed
that Golitsyn should be brought, into the operation and
given full access to the "Nosenko material." The reasoning
at this time, given Golitsyn's identification of Nosenko's
function as a false defector, was that the Nosenko operation
was "the reverse of the Golitsyn coin" and thus that Golitsyn's
assistance was required to pursue it properly. Accordingly, .
over the next several months Golitsyn was provided with
material from the 1962 and 1964 meetings with Nosenko and at
his request was supplied with all available biographic data
on Nosenko to assist him in "analyzing" the operation.
On 29 June 1964 Golitsyn was interviewed by Chief, Cl
Staff, Deputy Chief, Cl Staff and Chief, SR Division. The
following is quoted from the transcripts of this meeting:
Golitsyn: I have made a study of the docu¬
ments and information which was provided to
me about Nosenko and his interrogations. I
would like now to make known my conclusions
. . . my conclusion is that he is not a
bona fide defector. He is a provocateur,
who is on a mission for the KGB . . . to
mislead, chief in the field of investiga¬
tions . . . on Soviet penetrations made
mainly by [the] Second Chief Directorate
to Moscow . . . Why did they choose Nosenko
for that mission? In my opinion, Nosenko was
recommended by Churanov, Kovshuk and Guk*
for the mission. Nosenko could have been
*Vladimir A'leksandrovich Churanov, Vladislav Mikhaylovich
Kovshuk and Yuriy Ivanovich Guk. Churanov and Kovshuk were
colleagues and good friends of Nosenko * s in the - Second Chief
Directorate. Guk, also a close friend of Nosenko's, was a
one-time officer of the Second Chief Directorate; he trans¬
ferred to the First Chief Directorate and was posted at the
Soviet Mission to the European Office of the United Nations
in Geneva at the time of Nosenko's temporary duty there in
1962.
SECRET
SECRET
-119-
name d or recommended by them and the KGB
gave these people a chance. They are
very energetic--all of them. And, of
course, they discuss things among themselves.
Many of them had made mistakes-- they had
told too much. They were, therefore, in
the damage report (on my defection) and
for them the only way to act was to suggest
an operation against me in order to save
their face, to save the situation.
It can be argued that Golitsyn had two interests: (a)
to discredit Nosenko in order to maintain a position of pre¬
eminence as advisor to CIA (and other Western intelligence
services) on Soviet intelligence matters, and (b) to promote
his contentions as to how the West was being deceived by the
Soviet Union.in political and strategic matters, and thus
to enhance his position as advisor to governments on overall
Soviet political matters.
Goli.tsyn clearly had a high opinion of himself. When
he defected, he brought with him some 23 classified docu¬
ments from the Soviet embassy in Helsinki, which he made
clear he wished to discuss with President Kennedy and the
Director of Central Intelligence personally, to alert them
to what was going on and to measures needing to be taken.
Moreover, his willingness to cooperate with CIA and other
US government agencies underwent changes from time to time,
depending upon whether his demands for access to and inter¬
views with specified ranking officials of those organizations
were granted.
Golitsyn*s chosen role as interpreter of Soviet policy
and anti-Western actions was threatened by the arrival of
Nosenko. His response was to gain access to virtually all
of CIA's files on Nosenko for purposes of providing CIA with
an "interpretation" of the latter's role. In any event, the
idea took hold within CIA as a result of Golitsyn's hammer¬
ing away at this theme that we were being "had" by the
Soviets, particularly by being penetrated as a result of
clever KGB counterintelligence operations, and that Nosenko
had to be "broken" at all costs ; his "confession" would make
clear to us the details and dimensions of the Soviet
machinations.
Further, it was deemed expedient not only to proceed
with efforts to "break" Nosenko but also to study past
SECRET
'1-00000
SECRET
- 120 -
operations known to have been Soviet -controlled to see what
could be learned from these cases about how the Soviet in¬
telligence services had carried out their activities against
the West through the years. This study of historic Soviet
cases, designed not to explore a hypothesis but to prove an
already- accepted thesis, produced information about an awe¬
some "enemy," cunning and complex, lavishing money and man¬
power on operations that were almost invariably successful.
The fact that many of these cases were primarily of historic
interest» undertaken at a particular time to take advantage
of or exploit a particular situation that no longer obtained
or had little or no pertinence to Nosenko's defection, appears
to have been discounted. On the contrary, since the cases
included in the study were considered to have been hugely
successful in duping or deluding the Western intelligence
services and governments, it was concluded that we were con¬
tinuing to be deluded and duped. It was reasoned that, as
CIA and other Western intelligence services became increas¬
ingly aware of and informed on the Soviet operational tech¬
niques being used against them and changed their operational
tactics accordingly, the KGB simply adjusted to the new
situation and continued to outwit us. With Shelepin and
succeeding chiefs of the KGB as members of the Central Com¬
mittee, it was assumed that those KGB operations that could
be (or were) classed as dezinf ormatsiya were not only
important per se but took on added importance inasmuch as
the KGB, through its chief, was involved in the policy making
body of the Soviet Union. Consequently, any operation as
important as the one that involved sending a senior KGB
officer, Nosenko, to the West on a dezinformatsiya mission
must have been an exceedingly important one, involving high-
level staff coordination. Any other agents who provided
confirmatory information or whose information could in any
way be regarded as suspiciously coincidental had to be part
of the overall operation. Given the importance of the opera¬
tion, Chairman Khrushchev was undoubtedly directing the
whole thing himself.
No attention was paid to the fact that, despite the
assertions of Goleniewski and Golitsyn, there was no known
case of a KGB officer * s ever having been sent to discredit a
previous defector in the eyes of a Western intelligence
service. After brief consideration of the notion that
Nosenko might not even be a member of the KGB at all, it was
decided that the KGB had dispatched him to counter Golitsyn.
SECRET
SECRET
- 121 -
Conclusions
In retrospect, it seems worthwhile to point out that
(a) in the years since Nosenko's first contact and subsequent
defection, no information has ever been developed to sub¬
stantiate the charges made against him either by Golitsyn
or by the ’'mirror-readers”; (b) Golitsyn's information with
respect to dezinformatsiya has not been internally consistent
and (c) Golitsyn himself as the architect and sponsor of
theories presented has not been able to support his claims,
despite the wealth of information made available to him for
analysis . The following is quoted from an unsigned paper,
dated 10 September 1968, in summation of Golitsyn's claims:
Golitsyn's overall thesis, that the Soviet
leadership in 1959 developed a "New Policy”
(peaceful coexistence, non-violent tactics,
united front, etc.) is perfectly acceptable
as a statement of the "Right" strategy
developed during the mid- and late-fifties
and enshrined in the November 1960 Moscow
Manifesto. Golitsyn's depiction of this
policy as, in toto , a "misinformation"
operation rests upon his extremely broad
use of that term: "special deliberate
efforts of the communist governments to
mislead Western studies and to direct them
in wrong directions" by means of official
Soviet speeches and Party documents, offi¬
cial press and propaganda outlets, travel
controls, diplomatic activities, leaks, etc.
His vocabulary and general handling of this
new Bloc policy gives the strategy a con- ■ '
spiratorial quality not justified by its
essentially open and public character.
The. role of the KGB in the execution and
coordination of this policy is constantly-
alluded to, but no evidence is provided to
define the precise nature of its role and
no actual "covert" disinformation operations
are cited for the years from 1959 to the
present. Golitsyn provided factual evidence
for "politicalization" of the KGB in 1959 ,
but its new role may also be interpreted to
cover routine operations of covert propa¬
ganda, political action, recruitment of
SECRET
SECRET
- 122 -
agents of influence and specific "disinforma¬
tion” operations without involving the KGB
(or the Bloc intelligence services) in any
broader role.
i
SECRET
1 '1-00000
SECRET
-123-
CHAPTER VII
Golitsyn Vs. Nosenko: A Comparison
Of Their Handling By ClA
The purpose of this chapter is to describe the differ¬
ences in handling by CIA of the two KGB defectors, Anatoliy
Golitsyn and Yuriy Nosenko. Comparison is material to this
study, since it was Golitsyn's "confirmation" of certain
theories regarding Nosenko as a dispatched agent that helped
to establish the standards by which CIA judged Nosenko when
he walked in some months after Golitsyn. It is also material,
since Golitsyn - played a role in CIA efforts to "break" Nosenko.
Brief discussion of the treatment given the two men follows.
Interrogation
The defections of Golitsyn and Nosenko cannot be con¬
sidered directly comparable, since some five meetings were
held with Nosenko about eighteen months before his actual
defection. There had been no similar contact with Golitsyn
before his defection. However, the following statements can
be made.
Golitsyn was brought to this country within days of his
defection in Helsinki in December 1961. Standard interroga¬
tion procedures were initiated, which included his systematic
debriefing regarding his own biographic data, family back¬
ground and career, and his knowledge of the structure, organiza¬
tion , personalities and operations of the KGB. What he said
was checked against CIA files and formed the basis for his
acceptance within weeks of arrival in the United States as a
bona fide defector.
In Nosenko's case, he cannot be said to have been inter¬
rogated at all, in the strict sense of the word, during
initial contacts with him in Geneva in June 1962. For one
thing, he evinced no desire to defect at that time but simply
offered certain pieces of information that he thought would
be of interest to CIA, in exchange for a specified sum of
money that he claimed to need. Also, time with him was
limited.
When Nosenko actually defected in February 1964, he
was interrogated in a manner that contrasted sharply with that
applied in Golitsyn's case. In the interim between initial
SECRET
SECRET
-124-
contacts in 1962 and his defection in 1964, as previously-
explained, it had been concluded that he was a dispatched
agent. Voluminous papers had been written during this
period "proving" that such was the case, and because of
the accumulated "evidence" it was decided to attempt to
"break" him as soon as possible. Accordingly, and because
it was also believed imperative to act quickly, Nosenko’s
interrogation took place in various pre-planned stages or
phases, ranging from ostensibly friendly to hostile.
In Nosenko’s case, then, the entire effort was to force
him to admit to CIA* s accusations rather than to obtain in¬
formation from him in any logical or systematic fashion.
Efforts were made to "trap" him or "throw him off balance,"
by indicating that CIA had "proof" that he was lying, that •
his only option was to "confess" that he had been sent by
the KGB, etc. His denials of charges or refusals to "con¬
fess" only resulted in increasingly hostile treatment. While
his statements did contain inconsistencies, and there were
questions for which he gave no adequate or consistent and
logical answers, the manner in which he was questioned was
in no way that afforded the usual defector. Moreover, the
pressures put upon Nosenko contributed to the creation of
a climate not conducive to proper interrogation. It was not
until October 1967, in fact, that he received a proper in¬
terrogation.
Polygraph Examination
As with other phases of their respective handling, the
account of Nosenko’s polygraph examinations is in marked con¬
trast with that of Golitsyn.
Golitsyn was given two polygraph examinations, on 27
and 28 March 1962, by a polygraph operator of the Office of
Security. The tests were administered under special ground
rules that were established initially during discussions held
on 16 March 1962 between Deputy Chief, SR Division, and Deputy
Director, Office of Security. It was agreed at that time
that Golitsyn was to be regarded as a "special case"; his
"flap potential" was regarded as high, because high US
government officials were aware of Golitsyn’s allegations
that the US government and CIA were penetrated at a high
level, and these allegations had been accepted to that
point by CIA without reservations. Also, Golitsyn himself
had reacted adversely to the idea of taking a polygraph
examination and had consented only after it had been brought
SECRET
14-00000
-125-
home to him that the test was an absolute requirement for
receipt of resident alien status in the United States.
The unusual manner in which the tests were conducted
is illustrated in the following quotations from the report
later submitted by the polygraph operator:
The undersigned had a series of prepolygraph
conferences with [Chief], SR/CI [a] Cl Staff
officer, and [an officer] of the Office of
Security. The general consensus of the
interested parties regarding what areas
should and should not be covered during
polygraph testing all reflected the fact
that Subject [Golitsyn] should be disturbed
as little as possible by the questions asked
during the polygraph test so that he would
not feel personally offended and as a result
become "sour," unmanageable or uncooperative.
Furthermore, that no indication by given to
• [Golitsyn] during testing that there were
any doubts as to his reliability or defection
motivation.
. . . [Polygraph] coverage was to deal with
questions pertaining to whether [Golitsyn]
was a dispatched KGB agent, if [Golitsyn]
had a mission in connection with his defec¬
tion, if [Golitsyn] was intentionally mis-
forming his [American intelligence] inter¬
viewer , whether he had any secret prearranged
means of contact with Soviet officials, if
he had a concrete plan to return to the USSR,
as well as questions dealing with his motiva¬
tion (the latter to be asked as discreetly
as possible so as not to disturb) .
... It was also pointed out . . . during
the pre-polygraph conferences . . . that re¬
gardless of how [Golitsyn] reacted specifi¬
cally, even if there were consistent specific
indications of deception to the questions,
under no circumstances should [Golitsyn] be
made aware of the fact that [we] had conclu¬
sive polygraph evidence which reflected that
[Golitsyn] was attempting deception to the
pertinent questions.
14-00000
SECRET
-126-
Although the operator was fluent in Russian, the test
was given to Golitsyn on 27 March 1962 in English; Russian
was used only when Golitsyn failed to comprehend the full
and accurate meaning of a question. Golitsyn raised no
objections to any questions asked, but the operator did not
consider the day’s testing conclusive, because of the dif¬
ficulties that had arisen owing to Golitsyn's poor compre¬
hension of English plus a malfunctioning polygraph.
A second test was therefore given the following day,
28 March, in the Russian language, during the course of
which Golitsyn was asked the same questions as on the previ¬
ous day. Before the test could be initiated, however,
Golitsyn again had to be convinced of the necessity for
taking it. He stated that he had thought over the ques¬
tions he had been asked the previous day, and he considered
them "insulting." He resented having been asked whether he
had been sent by the KGB, whether he had a mission connected
with his defection having to do with misinformation, his
motivation for defecting, etc. In the operator's words, he
resented "all in all, any and every question which may have
reflected that he was not accepted 100 percent on the basis
of only his own explanations and assurances." Nevetheless,
the test was finally conducted. Upon its completion, the
operator informed Golitsyn that he (the operator) had con¬
cluded that Golitsyn was substantially truthful in his
answers and that, as far as the operator was concerned, the
results were favorable.
Six months later, the Office of Security reviewed the
polygraph charts, as well as the questions that had been
posed, the transcriptions of the interviews, and the final
report. On 19 September 1962, a memorandum was prepared for
the chief of the Interrogation and Research Division of the
Office of Security. The report contained the following
initial statements:
A review of [the operator's report on the
testing of Golitsyn] reflects everything
except a clear-cut statement of whether
or not Golitsyn lied or did not lie to
any or all of the questions. The report
states that the first day's testing was
inconclusive. The results of the second
day' s testing is not set 'forth. The re¬
port is rather remarkable for this reason.
SECRET
)
SECRET
-127-
This review indicates that the first day's charts
showed that Golitsyn was very nervous during testing on
that day, but considerably less so on the second. No partic¬
ular interpretation was placed on this lessened apprehension,
other than to note that Golitsyn knew what to expect in the
way of questions and procedures on the second day, and also
that on the second day he was tested in Russian rather than
English. Of more interest is the reviewer's conclusion that,
while the charts for 28 March show no noticeable reactions
to relevant questions, they also show no noticeable reactions
to any other questions: the reviewer was unable to determine
which, if any, of the questions were designed to be ’'hot" or
control questions that could provoke a response indicative
of deception; thus, the reviewer concluded that the questions
were not well conceived. In addition, it was noted that
Golitsyn was not asked any detailed questions on his personal
biography that might have indicated whether he was withhold¬
ing information. The ultimate conclusion was that the charts,
with the limitations noted above, did not show reactions in¬
dicating that Golitsyn was a dispatched Soviet agent. How¬
ever, the report also contained the following conclusion:
This should not be considered any definitive
[polygraph examination]. The conditions and
limitations placed on the [polygraph] offi¬
cer as reflected in the body of the report
imposed a set of conditions that preclude
and make impossible any unequivocal state¬
ment that a conclusive [polygraph examination]
was conducted.
*****
The use of the polygraph in Nosenko 1 s case contrasts
sharply with the way it was used on Golitsyn. We shall not
go into detail here, because Nosenko's polygraph examinations
are covered at length in Chapter VIII. It is relevant here,
however, to make the point that those polygraph examinations
of both Golitsyn and Nosenko performed prior to 1968 were all
invalid.
Access to Classified Information
With respect to their relative access to classified
information, the cases of Golitsyn and Nosenko could not
stand in greater contrast.
14-00000
SECRET
-128-
Practically from the moment of his arrival in this
country, Golitsyn began to demand access to CIA files.
He largely achieved his ends and was soon being given
transcripts of his own debriefing sessions as well as
what has been described as a "valuable libraryincluding
reference publications classified up to SECRET. Starting
in November 1963, voluminous information was made available
to him, including:
A. Thirty-two documents concerning the
Penkovskiy case.
B. Biographical sketch on, and all (83)
reports obtained from, Nikolay Artamonov, a
Soviet naval officer who defected in 1959.
C. _ Voluminous documents pertaining to the
Popov case, including secret writing messages,
meeting transcripts and contact reports.
1
D. Copies of the first four substantive cables
from Geneva relating to the circumstances of
Nosenko's contact with CIA in Geneva in 1962. The
cables included details of the first meeting with
a US Foreign Service Officer.
E. Transcriptions of all meetings with Nosenko
in Geneva in 1962 following those noted in the
cables described above.
F. Transcriptions of meetings 1 through 13
with Nosenko in Geneva in 1964.
G. Material requested by Golitsyn in connection
with his "work on the Nosenko caseV: biographic
information provided by Nosenko before he underwent
hostile interrogation; a copy of the documents and
handwritten notes that Nosenko brought out with
him; a resume of the first week's hostile interro¬
gation of Nosenko^ Nosenko's comments on Yuriy
Krotkov's manuscript entitled Fear (Krotkov was a
writer and KGB agent who defected in London in 1963) ;
and a nearly complete collection of photo identifica¬
tions made by Nosenko as of that date.
H. Sanitized copy of a cable summary of
Nosenko's reactions to Yuriy Krotkov.
SECRET
)
SECRET
-129-
I. Biographic sketch of a US citizen and
CIA staff officer at one time stationed in Moscow,
with a list of operations in which he was involved
J. Biographic sketch of a US citizen and
former CIA staff officer at one time stationed in
Moscow, with a list of operations in which he had
been involved.
K. Biographic sketch of a US citizen and
former CIA staff employee who had served as
Security Officer of the American embassy in Moscow
L. Biographic sketch of a US citizen and
Foreign Service Officer who cooperated with CIA
during the period of his assignment to the
American embassy in Moscow, plus a list of opera¬
tional actions carried out by him for CIA.
M. Biographic sketch of a US citizen and
Foreign Service Officer who cooperated with CIA
during the period of his assignment to the
American embassy in Moscow, with a list of opera¬
tional actions carried out by him for CIA.
N. Biographic sketch of a US citizen and
Foreign Service Officer assigned to the American
embassy in Moscow at one time. He had no CIA
affiliation.
O. Biographic sketch of a US citizen and
Foreign Service Officer assigned to the American
embassy in Moscow at one time. He had no CIA
affiliation. Golitsyn was provided with a copy
of an interview of him conducted by US govern¬
ment security officers (not identified as to
agency affiliation) .
P. Biographic sketch of a US citizen and
Foreign Service Officer assigned to the American
embassy in Moscow at one time. He had no CIA
affiliation.
Q. Biographic sketch of a US citizen and
CIA staff officer at one time assigned to Moscow.
R. Information on a Russian-born American
citizen employed as an interpreter by the United
SECRET
SECRET
-130-
Nations in Geneva who was the obj ect of a KGB
recruitment attempt while on loan to UNESCO for
conference work in Tbilisi in 1968.
S. Biographic information on CIA-connected
personnel mentioned in the Cherepanov papers.
This information was additional to sketches on
the same persons given to Golitsyn with the tran¬
script for Meeting No. 12 with Nosenko in Geneva
in 1964.
T. A nine-page summary of the status of
the Nosenko case, including information on the
results of Nosenko’s 1964 polygraph examination,
on his confrontation and subsequent interrogation,
on his life history, on CIA conclusions ("daily
support for our conviction that Nosenko was sent
on a KGB mission"), on CIA plans for future
handling of Nosenko (continued interrogation),
and on Nosenko's circumstances (confinement under
observation, without cigarettes or reading
material).
U. Copies of two reports on the subject of
KGB audio-technical operations, one prepared on
the basis of information provided by Golitsyn
himself in 1962 and one prepared on the basis of
information brought out by Nosenko in 1964, with
notation for Golitsyn that recent sweeping oper¬
ations in the American embassy in Moscow had
located all the microphones identified by Nosenko
and a number not mentioned by Nosenko.
V. A repeat of Nosenko * s commentary on
Krotkov (identified above), expanded to include
identifications Nosenko made of the KGB people
involved with Krotkov.
W. A list of questions that Krotkov had ■
suggested be put to Nosenko to confirm and clarify
information given by Krotkov.
X. Biographic sketches on Vladimir Kovshuk,
Yuriy Guk, Aleksandr Feklisov alias Fomin, and
Igor Ivanov. Kovshuk and Guk were KGB officers
known to both Golitsyn and Nosenko; with Vladimir
Churanov, they were credited by Golitsyn as having
SECRET
-131-
recommended to the KGB that Nosenko be sent to
the West to discredit Golitsyn in the eyes of CIA
and other Western intelligence services. Feklisov
was a KGB officer who visited the United States as
part of Khrushchev’s party in 1959 and later
(1960-1964) served as Counselor of the Soviet
embassy in Washington, DC. Ivanov was arrested
by the FBI in 1963 in connection with the case of
John W. Butenko, an electronics engineer who was
arrested as a KGB agent. These reports were given
to Golitsyn as his request.
Y. A chronology of the case of Boris Belitskiy,
a KGB-controlled CIA source. Golitsyn had asked to
"re-read" the file on Belitskiy, whose status vis - •
a-vis the KGB was first reported to CIA by Nosenko.
Golitsyn was also given a background sketch of
Belitskiy and transcripts of "all four contact
periods."
_Z. File summary of the case of Mikhail
Fedorov alias Razin, a GRU colonel who served as
an illegal in France in 1958-1959.
AA. Case descriptions of two operations ser¬
viced by CIA personnel in Moscow. Both were KGB
couriers dispatched on emigre operations into West
Germany, where they were apprehended, agreed to
work for American intelligence, and later returned
to the USSR.
BB. Responses by Nosenko to questions drafted
by Golitsyn on: recruitable Soviets (by name and
background) ; American double agents; the Popov case;
recruitment of US intelligence personnel; KGB
operations against US embassy (Moscow) personnel;
surveys or studies done by the KGB Second Chief
Directorate about arrested American spies (including
Popov and Penkovskiy); KGB awards (including those
given to persons who participated in the investi¬
gation of Penkovskiy, Popov, Stashinskiy); the
Penkovskiy case; Golitsyn.
CC. Charts indicating what Nosenko had reported
on KGB operational interest in specific persons
(i.e., operational "leads"), and what CIA had been
able to develop on them through investigation, with
SECRET
SECRET
CIA comments as appropriate; an outline of infor¬
mation provided by Nosenko on the structure and
personnel assignments in the KGB as he knew them;
a chronology of Nosenko's life "in varying ver¬
sions."
By contrast, the CIA position with regard to revelation
of information to Nosenko is indicated by the following state
ment taken from a memorandum for the DDP prepared by Chief,
SR Division, dated 30 March 1964:
. . . I think we should make absolutely
sure that Subject [Nosenko] does not learn
a single thing from us that we do not want
him (and eventually the KGB) to know. I
think CIA has to take a very firm position
on .this issue, otherwise the FBI might urge
a delay in confrontation while they present
case after case to [Nosenko] in an effort
to learn more from him.
For information on Nosenko* s deprivation of reading matter of
any sort for long periods of time, much less intelligence
files of the sort given to Golitsyn, see Chapter III.
Physical Confinement
Golitsyn cannot be said to have been physically confined
at any time. The following description of the protective
custody afforded him and his reaction to any type of control
is quoted from the 1976 Counterintelligence Staff Study
(No. 3) on Golitsyn:
Golitsyn always felt the need for protection
against possible KGB retaliation, but quite
obviously believed he alone was the best
judge of what this entailed. He wanted
guards around, but not underfoot. The record
is replete with his complaints against the
guards and his attempts to isolate them.
This became a key issue in the adoption of
the codicil to the Statement of Agreement
in July 1962, when Golitsyn moved into his
own house and was given complete personal
control of the guards, their hours of duty
and their responsibilities. From that point
on, Golitsyn was essentially unguarded. His
SECRET
SECRET
-133-
wife also railed against her "companions"
in the early days. She made frequent trips
into Washington to shop or attend movies,
theater or ballet. At these times, she
would dismiss her chauffeur for lengthy
periods. On two occasions she took the bus
alone to New York for the day, and Golitsyn
also visited New York in November 1962, at
which time he roamed the city unescorted.
Golitsyn*s behavior from that time on followed a similar
pattern. He suddenly left the United States for the United
Kingdom in December 1962, and while in England he lived where
he wished and had no security protection. The British asked
Golitsyn to keep his whereabouts to himself, not to stay in
one hotel for any length of time, and to call when he wanted
to meet. According to the study quoted above, this loose
method of dealing with Golitsyn probably helped in maintain¬
ing a cooperative attitude on his part; it also apparently
set a precedent for his attitude toward the manner in which
he would live upon his return to the United States in July
1963. Upon his return here, he was given complete freedom
to set his own pattern of living and working, following the
British example. He obtained his own residence in New York,
moved several times, developed the concept that he was the
best judge of his own security, and at times lived "almost
under the eaves of the Soviet Mission’* in New York while
simultaneously refusing to talk to CIA officers because CIA
was "penetrated."
Nosenko’ s physical confinement and deprivation of even
minor amenities from the time of his defection in early 1964
until late October 1967 stand in stark contrast to the treat¬
ment afforded Golitsyn. This matter has been covered so
fully in Chapter III that it requires n<? further comment.
Conclusions
If summation is needed, the following can be stated with
respect to the five areas dealt with above:
A. Golitsyn controlled his own interrogation,
withholding information if he chose, refusing to
• answer questions according to his own whim, and
on occasion refusing even to talk to CIA officers.
Nosenko was not really listened to (or even talked
to for long stretches of time), much less properly
SECRET
4-00000
SECRET
-134-
interrogated, for several years after the date of
his defection.
B. Golitsyn was given a signed agreement
covering the conditions of his cooperation with
the US government, which met all of his demands.
Nosenko was specifically denied a written contract,
on the grounds that an oral agreement was the
’’bureaucratically correct” manner of handling his
relationship with the US government, until five
years after his defection (1969).
C. Golitsyn’s polygraph examination was admin¬
istered under ground rules imposed by SR Division.
These rules produced inconclusive test results,
but full assurances were given Golitsyn that he
had passed his examination. No further attempt
was made to establish Golitsyn’s bona fides .
Nosenko, on the other hand, underwent three separate
series of polygraph tests. Two of the three were
conducted in such a manner as to prejudice the re¬
sults against Nosenko; under the ground rules im¬
posed by the SR Division officers on the polygraph
operator, the latter was under instructions to
’’find" evidences of deception in the polygraph
charts , whether they were there or not.
D. With respect to access to information,
Golitsyn was provided with literally safes-full of
classified documents, including files on cases
that were regarded as highly sensitive within CIA
and to which only a very small number of CIA staff
officers had access. Nosenko not only did not see
any intelligence material but was denied access to
newspapers, books, radio, or even personal contact
with other human beings.
E. As to physical confinement, Golitsyn was
simply never confined; the thought of confining
him did not even arise. Nosenko spent virtually
all of his first five years in this country as
a prisoner, given fewer amenities than he would
have received in most jails or prisons within
the United States, or in some form of protective —-
custody.
SECRET
SECRET
- 135 -
It seems self-evident that these two defectors should
have received the same treatment, that one was as suspect
as the other until completion of all appropriate processing
aimed at determining bona fides .
SECRET
-136-
CHAPTER VIII
Use of the Polygraph in the Nosenko Case
Nosenko was first polygraphed on 4 April 1964, in a
series of six tests. That the procedures followed were
somewhat unorthodox is indicated by the following quotations
from the report of the polygraph operator:
During the pre-polygraph conferences with
representatives of SR Division, the under¬
signed was informed that the polygraph
interview was part of an overall plan to
help break [Nosenko] and elicit the truth
from him. SR Division's instructions were
that, regardless of whether [Nosenko]
passed his polygraph test or not, he was
to be informed at the termination of his
polygraph interview that he was lying, and
. had not passed his polygraph interview.
The question of [Nosenko's] willingness to
participate in the polygraph test was one of
minor consideration, since he had, on previ¬
ous occasions , agreed that he would take the
test. However, whether [Nosenko] would con¬
tinue with the polygraph testing, if he was
confronted with attempted deception after
an initial test run, was one of the considered
problems. Consequently, in order to preclude
the possibility of [Nosenko's] terminating the
test prior to its completion, it was decided
that a minor deviation from the accepted
polygraph technique would be used during the
polygraph testing, specifically to ensure that
a polygraph record of [Nosenko 1 s] reactions
to all the pertinent questions be obtained
prior to challenging him on any significant
polygraph deception indications his charts
might reflect. Because of the extenuating
[sic] circumstances of the case, this plan
was followed throughout the polygraph inter¬
view.
. . . When [Nosenko] arrived for his test,
[the fact that he had been drinking] was
SECRET
SECRET
-137-
evident both to [the operator] and the
examining physician who checked [Nosenko]
prior to [Nosenko 1 s] polygraph testing . . .
Although [Nosenko] had used both alcohol and
some unknown drug prior to testing, there is
no question, based both on analysis of
[Nosenko*s] polygraph charts as well as
personal observation during the interview,
that [Nosenko] has attempted deliberate
deception in the specific pertinent areas
[on which he was questioned].
According to the pre-agreed upon plan, the
different phases involving various pertinent
areas were covered with [Nosenko] polygraph-
ically. Challenge of [Nosenko' s] reactions
was indirect and "soft." . . . Subject was
told that he was lying to numerous pertinent
questions and was accused of being a dis¬
patched agent.
• After completion of the interview, the SR
representative at the safesite was informed,
in front of [Nosenko], of [the operator's]
opinion that [Nosenko] was lying and was a
dispatched Soviet agent. [Nosenko] was taken
into protective custody and escorted to his
new place of residence.
A second series of polygraph tests were administered to
Nosenko between 18 and 25 October 1966. Although by this
time the operator had transferred from the Office of Security
to SR Division, it was desired by SR that he conduct the new
polygraph tests. He was allowed by the Office of Security
to do so, as an exception to the rule that all polygraph
testing be performed by Security personnel, on the basis of
Chief, SR* s statement that, for Nosenko' s polygraphing , use
of a person of his "temperament" was essential.
The following is quoted from an interim report dated
24 October 1966 (i.e., before completion of the new polygraph
series), which was attached to a memorandum from Chief, SR
to the DCI.
Our aims in this phase of the interrogation
have been limited: in view of the possibility
of losing access to Nosenko, we have sought
SECRET
14-00000
SECRET
- 138 -
(a) to strengthen our basic report, now in
preparation, by testing his story further,
clarifying points of confusion and reveal¬
ing new contradictions, and by polygraph
examinations in key areas, and (b) to lead
toward his eventual confession by directly
exploiting our hypotheses about the true
background of Nosenko and this KGB opera¬
tion, to convey to Nosenko the impression
that we know more than before, that we
possess irrefutable proof of his guilt and
that he has no prospects for release. We
refrained from doing this in earlier phases
of the interrogation, but at this point
there seems little to lose.
. . . [Regarding his identity]: Nosenko was
questioned extensively on the polygraph con¬
cerning his identity ... He was also given
a series of tests asking for the first letter
of his given name. The whole alphabet was
covered, and the polygraph charts show that
he became increasingly tense, culminating
at the letter S (or perhaps T) on both runs.
While we recognize that testing of this sort
may not give valid results, it certainly
gets over to Nosenko the degree of our doubt
and may even help us determine who he really
is.
Nosenko * s becoming "increasingly tense" during this
1966 polygraph examination must be evaluated in the light of
certain facts that were not brought out in this report. Let
us begin by giving a schedule of the hours during which he
was under continuous polygraph interrogation:
Date and Times
Hours and Minutes
19 October
1330 - 1530
2 ■
20 October
0930 - 1215
2:45 .
1530 - 1910
3:40
SECRET
'1-00000
SECRET
-139-
Date and Times
Hours and Minutes
21 October
0930 - 1245 3:15
-• 1645 - 1810 - 1 :25
25 October
1350 - 1545 1:55
1630 - 1805 1:35
26 October
1000 - 1320 3:20
1755 - 1925 1:30
27 October
1020 - 1345 3:25
1700 - 1913 2:13
2 8 October
0955 - 1020 :25
1024 - 1125 1:01
Total hours of continuous
polygraph examination 28:29
When queried during the present investigation about the
advisability of such long sessions of continuous polygraphing,
a responsible official of the Office of Security's Polygraph
Branch stated that such sessions are counterproductive and
contrary to their organization * s policy; The long confine¬
ment, plus operation of certain of the polygraph sensors,
may result in pain as well as artifactitious reactions. Re¬
sults of a polygraph examination conducted under such condi¬
tions are not dependable.
In addition, it should be pointed out that during this
period the days began early and ended late for Nosenko, be¬
cause when he was not being polygraphed he was being intensively
interrogated. The record shows that in addition to the
approximately 28 hours of polygraphing, he was subjected to
15 hours of straight interrogation. The dividing line between
SECRET
'1-00000
SECRET
-140-
polygraphing and hostile interrogation is not always clear
from the record, however, because the polygraph operator
participated in both. For example, at one point the typed
record reads:
[The operator] told [Nosenko] he is a fanatic
who was told too little to support his legend
and that his future is now "zero."
It is also probable that Nosenko f s physical movements
were restricted for long periods of time during this whole
period. In a report he wrote on 16 November 1967 , the
Director of Security stated:
. . . [Nosenko] was left strapped in a chair
between periods of interrogation for as long
as four or five hours at a time. As you
know, the role of this Office in the Nosenko
case during the past three years has been one
exclusively of support under the direction
- of SB Division personnel. None the less, I
have consistently instructed my personnel
who were guarding him that I would not con¬
done or support any treatment involving
physical abuse. I have confirmed this one
example of what I consider to be physical
abuse and regret that it was not brought to
my attention.
Nosenko*s final polygraph examination, conducted under
the direction of the Office of Security, was quite at
variance with the first two. Initiated on 2 August 1968,
it concluded on 6 August 1968. The tests took place after
approximately 7,000 pages of transcripts and related materials
had been compiled during the course of Kosenko's new interro-
tion undertaken in late October 1967. About 60 questions of
a pertinent nature were covered in the interview. Nosenko
was completely cooperative, no problems were encountered,
and the conclusion of the polygraph operator was that Nosenko
had been substantially truthful in answering all relevant
questions put to him.
In the course of the present investigation, the Office
of Security was requested to make a further reevaluation of
the Nosenko polygraph charts of April 1964, October 1966,
and August 1968. The resultant report, dated 30 September
1976 and signed by the Director of Security, states:
SECRET
SECRET
-141-
This memorandum is in response to your
request for a review of the polygraph
charts of Yuriy Ivanovich Nosenko obtained
during polygraph interrogations in April
1964 and October 1966 . . . [and] in August
1968 ... ...
After a thorough review of the charts
obtained in April 1964, it is our opinion
that the polygraph charts obtained do not
contain sufficient technical data on which
to base a conclusion of deception or to
support that Mr. Nosenko was a dispatched
agent of the KGB . . .
Finally, the polygraph patterns produced
to pertinent questions during the August
1968 polygraph examination substantiate
that Mr. Nosenko was truthful and that he
had not given false information to his CIA
debriefing officers. It is our opinion
that the examiner in that testing was
correct in his chart analysis.
i
SECRET
SECRET
-142-
CHAPTER IX
Psychological and Medical Findings
A small, but nevertheless key role was played by two
Agency specialists, respectively a psychologist and a
psychiatrist, in the handling of Nosenko. Like so much
else that occurred in this Case, this aspect is edifying
mainly in the negative sense of demonstrating how the ser¬
vices of such professionals ought not to be exploited. In
sum, the psychologist and psychiatrist principally involved
in this case were given enough misinformation about Nosenko * s
bona fides to prejudice seriously any chance of an accurate
personality assessment.
We now examine in some detail the roles played by the
psychologist and the psychiatrist. In doing so, we have
very much in mind the fact that both these gentlemen are
members of organized professions, both of which impose
explicit standards of conduct upon their members. We must
therefore- look for possible conflict between demands the
Agency made of these professionals on one hand, and their
professional standards on the other.
A. The Role of the Psychologist
The psychologist *s role will be dealt with first
because, to judge by the written record, he was the
first to assess Nosenko from the psychological point
of view, by means of a brief interview and test administered
on 23 June 1964. His initial report is dated 9 July 1964 ^
In addition, he interviewed Nosenko at length in 14 ses¬
sions during the period 3-21 May 1965 . He then wrote a
chronicle of Nosenko*s life and an overall psychological
evaluation based on these interviews.
By way of background , it should be said that the
psychologist is an extremely insightful person with
clinical experience acquired both before joining CIA
as well as during his CIA service. He has developed
his own system of interpreting the Wechsler intelligence
tests (Wechsler-Bellevue and Wechsler Adult Intelligence
Scale), which he calls the Personality Assessment System
(PAS). It is PAS that, for over two decades, has been
the main resource used by the Clandestine Service in the
assessment of personality for operational purposes.
SECRET
i '1-00000
SECRET
-143-
Like any other scientific practitioner, however,
a psychologist can only function properly on the
basis of valid data. If you put a cube of ice in a
patient ' s mouth before inserting the thermometer, you
do not get an accurate temperature reading. If you
provide an examining psychologist or psychiatrist
with erroneous data regarding a defector, the findings
of his examination will inevitably be in part erroneous.
Personality assessment instruments, or "tests, M
also have their limitations. They yield results that
should be read only as statements of the statistical
probability of the presence of a given personality
predisposition or characteristic. In other words, the
results give the psychologist a su ggestion as to what
to look for in a person, as he collects further data.
In the case here under consideration, the personality
formula that the psychologist derived from his administra
tion of the PAS test to Nosenko suggested that Nosenko
might have the characteristics of a sociopath. The
psychologist's task was then to evaluate this datum
within a framework that included the following elements:
1. His judgment of the validity of his
own test results. Note that he depended on a
single, English-language measurement instru¬
ment when he examined Nosenko on 23 June 1964.
2. Personal interviews. He had time for
only a limited interview at the time of test¬
ing , and it was conducted without benefit of
an interpreter in English, a language Nosenko
spoke with far from idiomatic fluency.
Lengthy interviews were conducted later, in
May 1965, long after the original diagnosis
had been made. They also were* conducted in
English.
3. Collateral data, obtained from senior
SR officers, which were uniformly prejudicial
to Nosenko. The latter was described as one
who lied and changed his story constantly, and
who had been sent to the United States on a
mission for the KGB. Doubt was even expressed
as to whether Nosenko was the person he-professed
to be.
SECRET
SECRET
-144-
Subsequent events have revealed that Nosenko's
falsehoods were in fact minor ones. But the psychologist
did not know all this; told that Nosenko lied constantly
and knowing that manipulative lying is part of the
psychopathic syndrome, he diagnosed Nosenko as a psycho¬
path. - ....
The term "psychopath" (another term used inter¬
changeably is "sociopath") itself deserved a word of
explanation, because its connotation is misleading.
Like so many psychological terms * it evolved out of the
fact that psychologists tend to be involved primarily
with people in trouble, very often with those who end up
in prisons- and mental institutions. A survey of psycho¬
logical literature reveals, not surprisingly, that the
one quintessential criterion of a psychopath is that he
is habitually given to criminal or delinquent behavior.
The criteria that psychologists use in distinguishing
between psychopaths and non-psychopaths have been
developed almost entirely from studies of juvenile
delinquents, criminals and mental patients, and thus the
term is really only applicable with any certainty to in¬
dividuals belonging to one or another of those groups.
Despite this fact, testing of many people who are not
delinquent or criminal may yield a score or profile
of scores suggesting psychopathy. To illustrate the
point, let us take an example. On the Minnesota
Multiphasic Personality Inventory (one of the most widely
used clinical testing instruments in this country) , the
profile that suggests psychopathy has also been generated
in testing persons who turned out to be good WACs in
World War II and others who have been predicted as,
likely to succeed in the life insurance business. Yet,
good WACs and life insurance agents are obviously not
groups to whom we would ordinarily apply the term
"psychopath." Thus, the fact that you have a predis¬
position to psychopathy does not mean that you necessarily
become one; the psychopathic profile on either the MMPI
or the PAS test is merely a warning signal of what you
might do under certain adverse circumstances.
When he tested Nosenko, the psychologist was not
fully aware of all the pressures under which this defector
was functioning. He was unaware of the manner of his
sudden confinement after glowing promises had been made
of rewards for defection; of the falsified polygraph
results, and the fact that Nosenko had been informed
SECRET
'1-00000
SECRET
-145-
that the examination showed him guilty of deception;
or of the fact that the principal case officer had
told Nosenko that the latter's information (later to
prove of great value) was all ’’crap." Given these
factors, we would have to conclude a priori that the
resultant PAS personality profile was likely to be
partly spurious.
The exact extent to which the psychologist's test
results were inexact cannot be determined, but one
example is illustrative of the possibilities. One part
of the profile suggested that Nosenko was endowed with
a well-below average memory. That his memory was
functioning at less than average level at the time he
took the test cannot be doubted; but it has already
been made clear that he was functioning under extremely
adverse conditions, and, since the Wechsler subtest that
measures memory span has been experimentally shown to be
vulnerable to so-called state (i.e., temporary) anxiety,*
this aspect of the personality profile must be considered
spurious. From Nosenko ' s performance during extensive
debriefings since he was released from confinement and
began to receive normally humane treatment, we know that
his memory is in fact exceptionally good. We can only
conclude that, if it functioned badly at the time of test¬
ing , this was largely owing to anxiety induced by treat¬
ment received at the hands of CIA.
As to the psychologist * s characterization of
Nosenko as a psychopath, the limitations of such a
diagnosis have already been made clear. Since his re¬
lease from incarceration, although he has certainly shown
himself to be an emphathic person, winning and charming
when he wants to be, he has not shown any of the unde¬
sirable traits associated with psychopathy. Quite to
the contrary, as of this time at least, he has since
1969 comported himself with both dignity and discretion.
The psychologist's evaluation contained a section
entitled "Vulnerabilities" that was, once again, clearly
based on the premise that Nosenko was dissembling, when
he denied being under continued KGB control. The psychologist
wrote:
*Matarazzo, J. D., Measurement and Appraisal of Adult Intelli ¬
gence . Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1972. Page 444.
SECRET
i '1-00000
SECRET
-146-
Under prolonged pressure he will admit almost
anything to get relief. Another vulnerabil ity
is that he will "break" in order to get relief.
Care should be taken to continue pressure for
some time after an initial break is secured
to allow for vacillation and modification.
Long periods of isolation after these breaks
may be useful in evaluating the reliability
of his information. In general, it is better
to give him slight rewards (e.g., cigarettes,
baths, etc.) for no apparent reason than to
tie them to periods of cooperation, etc.
The psychologist 1 s last major involvement in the
case appears to have been the series of debriefings having
to do with Nosenko' s personal history, conducted during
the period 3-21 May 1965. These led the psychologist to
the following conclusions and recommendations:
1. Nosenko's story was consistent with
the previous diagnosis of a "bright sociopath"
(i.e., psychopath).
2. The psychologist was "totally at a
loss to even attempt to rationali ze why a
story with this much pathology would be used
as a legend. Nothing could be served other
than to discredit the man to whom it was as¬
signed.
3. New approaches were necessary, as
described in the following paragraph:
I have few specific recommendations.
The first is to consider | pentothal
sodium [sic] interview . . . Second,
he can be hit with a hostile, or a
better term would be a needling, in¬
terrogation on his psychological
weaknesses. His reaction to my mild
needle on him running away from a bad
situation suggests he may be highly
vulnerable in this area. Third, some
consideration could be given to turn¬
ing him back to the Soviets. The •
publication of his life story with
SECRET
SECRET
- 147 -
the proper editorial changes--
emphasizing the class distinctions
and privileges in a classless society
could be most humiliating to the
Soviets. In addition, we could take
the gamble of demonstrating that de¬
fection is an honorable act of moti¬
vated men. The US has no room for
the misfits and failures of the Soviet
system.
The above findings were still insufficient for some
of the SR Division personnel, who then drafted a series
of very specific questions to be put to the psychologist
Of these the first three will be quoted, together with
the psychologist's answers:
1. This man's story is full of demon¬
strable lies. Often these lies seem point¬
less- -no matter from what point of view
they are studied. When challenged, he will
sometimes retreat from one of his stories;
in other instances, he will cling adamantly
to one even when it is clear to all that he
is lying and even when he has an easy way
out. In other words, his lies, distortions
and rationalizations are harder to under¬
stand than those of most "normal" people.
In your opinion, when he lies, does he do so :
a. because he is a compulsive
liar;
( Answer : No.)
b. because he seeks ; to bolster
his stature and ego for his own reasons;
( Answer : Essentially yes.)
c. because the KGB told him to.
( Answer : Perhaps.)
2. Do the incidence and nature of his in¬
accuracies and distortions add up to a behavior
pattern that might reasonably be called "normal"?
If not, how can it be described in layman's
terms?
(Answer: Not a "normal" personality but legally
normal and not hospitalizeable.)
SECRET
14-00000
SECRET
-148-
3. If his behavior pattern is not
"normal," could it be counterfeit, either
for personal reasons or because he was
briefed to comport himself this way?
Could he play such a role over a considerable
period of time?
( Answer : Absolutely not.)
When at long last, in February 1968, SB Division
concluded its long-awaited study of the Nosenko case,
the findings of the psychologist were included in the
following abbreviated form:
Nosenko is a rationalizer, a distorter, and
an evasive person clearly capable of dis¬
sembling for personal reasons. He is not
a compulsive liar. He is inclined to relate
what he thinks he is expected to say rather
than to tell the truth as he knows it. He
lies by design as well as for effect, however,
and he does not always embroider just to
bolster his ego. He is neither "insane" nor
psychotic, and he suffers from no "delusions."
Nosenko's rationalizations are not the pro¬
duct of derangement.
The most notable quality of this summary is its
selectivity. For example:
1. The summary nowhere mentioned the
diagnosis of Nosenko as a psychopath/sociopath.
The fact that psychopaths generally try to
evade the penalties of their misbehavior by
adaptive role-playing (e.g., sudden religious
"conversions" to win sympathy ^nd "prove" they
are changing their ways) could’ have served
dangerously to undercut the thesis that
Nosenko was sufficiently dedicated to persist
in carrying out a long-term KGB plot in face
of the sort of treatment he had received
since 4 April 1964.
2. By the above-cited omission, it tends
to establish a dichotomy between the "insane"
or "psychotic," who suffer "delusions,".and
"normal" people, who tell the truth. It
carefully skirted the existence of a middle
SECRET
)
SECRET
-149-
ground between normality and psychoticism
in which people do not behave "normally”
but are not insane. Yet this distinc¬
tion had been drawn specifically in answer
to one of the SR Division questioned quoted
above. '
Enough has been said to make clear that the psycholo¬
gist was put in an impossible position. On the basis of
the "facts" provided him, he was frankly puzzled as to how
Nosenko could have been selected for a KGB mission in¬
volving extended dissimulation.
The psychologist was not sure enough of his ground
to stick to his guns. As a psychologist who had dealt
previously with a number of Soviet defectors, he had a
great degree of insight. Oh the other hand, he knew
that he did not have all the facts, because Chief, SR
had specifically told him so. Insight is of very little
use when not based on adequate data.
Helms tried to help. When told by the psychologist
that the latter did not have all the facts necessary to
make a judgment about Nosenko, Helms called Chief, SR
and instructed him that the psychologist should be fully
informed. This instruction appears to have been disre-
garded.
We can only conclude that the psychologist did what
could legitimately be expected of him, within the con¬
straints of the Agency's command structure. The weak¬
nesses that in retrospect we can perceive in the
psychologist' s diagnosis and recommendations can be as -
cribed directly to his being asked to make professional
judgments based on inadequate knowledge. The propriety
of the Agency's employing a professional in this manner
should be carefully reviewed.
The Role of the Psychiatrist
The psychiatrist's role in the Nosenko operation
was more extensive and of longer duration than the
psychologist's . In addition to physical examinations,
it included giving advice on how Nosenko should be treated
while in confinement, advice on special interrogation
techniques such as the use of sodium pentothal, and an
assessment of Nosenko's personality.
SECRET
'1-00000
SECRET
-150-
The psychiatrist has stated (in discussions
with the senior author of this report) that he had
been told when he was first assigned to the case that
Nosenko was concealing information of great importance
to the US government. That he worked throughout the .
case under this assumption is evident from the total
context of his reporting. On the other hand, there
is no evidence that either SR Division or Cl Staff
shared the reasons for their suspicions with him to a
sufficient extent for him to have evaluated their
claim, even had he been qualified by professional
background to make such an evaluation. He knew and
accepted his limitations in the latter regard; for
example, ih a report dated 23 February 1965, after
he had spent an hour observing an interrogation, he
remarked:
[Nosenko] comes off [in] his responses to
questions (at least when I saw him) in the
same fashion as always though I a m not
compe tent to judge the content of~~what he
says [Underlining added.]
Yet, even though the psychiatrist was not an "opera¬
tions officer" according to normal Agency criteria,
during his long association with this case (which included
34 examinations of Nosenko in the year 1964 alone) he
acted in more than a purely medical capacity. Not only
did he check on Nosenko*s health and endeavor to safeguard
it, he also advised the operational component of the
Agency on certain aspects of their own specialized
activities to which his medical and psychiatric knowledge
appeared relevant. In this latter capacity, the psychi¬
atrist’s name was invoked frequently in operational
correspondence, generally without his knowledge; for
example, in a 27 November 1964 memorandum to the DDP,
concerning arrangements for forthcoming interrogations,
Chief, SR stated:
Given . . . the assessment by both [the psychi¬
atrist] and [the psychologist] that Subject is
a compulsive talker, we are hopeful that we will
make some progress.
By implication, this and other similar references evoked
the recondite expertise of the psychiatric and psycholog¬
ical professionals to bolster claims of impending success.
SECRET
SECRET
-151-
11 should be made clear that throughout the
Nosenko affair, the psychiatrist was entitled to
feel that he was acting properly in line of duty.
His component, the Office of Medical Services/
Operational Services Division, was specifically
charged with providing assistance to the operational
components of the Agency. It had long been Agency
practice, both at Headquarters and in the field,
for medical doctors to function in a partly opera¬
tional capacity, even though they were not neces¬
sarily cognizant of all aspects of the operations
in which they became involved. The assumption was
that senior operations officers knew what they were
about and that, within rather vaguely defined
limits, a doctor of medicine could accept their
authority as guaranty of the rightness of what he
did to assist them.
Thus, it was only natural that the psychiatrist,
having been told by senior Agency officials that
Nosenko was consistently lying about his true mis¬
sion,' should accept their views. Unlike the psycholo¬
gist , he did not even have the advantage of having
systematically debriefed Nosenko on his life history;
had he done so, he might have shared the psycholo¬
gist* s suspicions that the SR Division opinion of
Nosenko was not beyond legitimate challenge.
Nevertheless, the anomalous situation in which .
the psychiatrist was placed had two unfortunate
consequences :
1. Because he was led to assume that
Nosenko was systematically lying, his
diagnosis was somewhat distorted.
2. The same assumption led him to
play a quasioperational role in the handling
of Nosenko.
Let us look in greater depth at the first consequence
In so doing, it is not our purpose to second-guess a
qualified psychiatrist; rather, it is our purpose to
ascertain whether this particular professional, well
known to his colleagues for his devotion to duty, was
in fact given a fair opportunity to make an honest
evaluation.
SECRET
SECRET
-152-
The psychiatrist's diagnosis of Nosenko, which
he labeled "Psychiatric Impressions,” was dated 20
December 1964. It read in part:
Psychiatric impression is that of an individual
who shows an above average intelligence capacity,
is shrewd and perceptive. While he claims to
have desired to cooperate and work with US
officials, his antisocial behavior was destruc¬
tive and self-defeating to the aims he claimed
to pursue. His own needs and desires are of
paramount importance to him and he manipulates
those around him without regard to consequence
in order to satisfy his needs. As such he tends
to be selfish, ungrateful, narcissistic and
exhibitionistic. In satisfying his own desires
there is no concern for the feelings or interests
of others. There has been no evidence of a
sense of honor or of shame. He has seen
nothing wrong with his own behavior, being unable
to view this from another's viewpoint. For most
of his adult life, it is reasonable to expect
that he has operated in this manner--without
conscience, without guilt and has directed his
efforts at satisfying his own needs. He may
at times give the impression of being a reliable
and steadfast person, but after gaining security
for himself and the confidence of others, can
shrug off major obligations easily. As with
many individuals of this personality makeup,
his disregard for the truth is remarkable.
Whether there is a good chance that he will get
away with a lie or whether detection is almost
certain, he shows no signs of perturbation and
can coolly maintain his position. While com¬
mitting the most serious of perjuries, it is
easy for him to look anyone calmly in the eye.
Alcohol certainly catalyzes his tendency to
uninviting or destructive behavior . . .
Emotional attachment is shallow. Although he
may give at times the impression of being
cordial and affectionate, beneath this is an
astonishing callousness.
As a youngster, this man might well have been
looked upon as a juvenile delinquent with
14-00000
SECRET
- 153 -
constant brushes with authority. As he grew
older this behavior most likely continued in
the same pattern with occasional brushes with
the law and perhaps some punishment. But the
effectiveness of his ability to manipulate
and protect himself by personable appeals may
have kept him in circulation in society on
the fringe, so to speak. His reaction to his
restricted environment is not unusual, as
some such individuals come to accommodate to
some limits imposed by authority while at the
same time not accepting the seriousness of
their situation and believing that, as in the
past,' they can talk their way out. This man
is capable of playing a role and playing it
effectively.
With this view of his personality, it seems
unlikely that he could have achieved much
stature as a staff intelligence officer. He
.could, however, have been effective in various
types of intelligence operations.
On 1 October 1976, the above evaluation was discussed
with the psychiatrist in the light of facts previously
unknown to him. Inter alia , he was given (in writing)
background on the following aspects of the Nosenko case:
1. CIA promises of substantial monetary
rewards and an opportunity for Nosenko to work
with CIA on a salaried basis.
2. The conclusion of the Director of
Security, as of 30 September 1976, that "Mr.
Nosenko was truthful and that |ie had not
given false information to his CIA debriefing
officers."
3. Acceptance of Nosenko's bona fides
by both FBI and CIA.
The memorandum of conversation dictated by the
senior author following the above discussion reads in
part:
[The psychiatrist] agreed that his 20 December
1964 memorandum, as well as subsequent psychiatric
SECRET
SECRET
- 154 -
judgments which he had made, were all heavily
dependent on "collateral information" which
he obtained from representatives of the SB
Division. He agreed that, had he known the
facts as stated in my memorandum, his psychi¬
atric judgments might have differed from
those he actually made.
In connection with some of the specific points
raised in my memorandum, [the psychiatrist]
made the following observations:
[1] , He was not aware of the
■financial or other promises made to
Nosenko, and perhaps assumed that
Nosenko, like most defectors, was
angling for large rewards. [The
psychiatrist] mentioned Golitsyn
as among the precedents which he
probably had in mind . . .
[2] . In regard to Nosenko's
alleged lying and deception, he was
totally dependent upon the judgments
of SB Division personnel as well as
that of [a polygraph operator].
[The psychiatrist] stated that, until he read my
1 October 1976 memorandum, he had never known
that Nosenko had contributed valuable informa-
tion. He had also never received any informa¬
tion concerning Nosenko*s behavior since his
being released from incarceration ...
We are thus justified in concluding that, in the
psychiatrist' s case as in that of the psychologist, a
professional was not given the proper "collateral in¬
formation" on the basis of which to render a sound profes
sional judgment. More explicitly, because neither the
psychiatrist nor psychologist was accurately informed
even about such basic aspects of the case as the promises
made to Nosenko (which could not possibly be considered
to have had sensitive security implications), neither
man had an accurate criterion for judging the appropri¬
ateness of Nosenko's behavior in seeking better treatment
SECRET
SECRET
-155-
Given the apparent consensus among the Agency's
leadership that there were good and sufficient reasons
for incarcerating and trying to "break” Nosenko, it is
not surprising in hindsight that the psychiatrist offered
j udgments and advice extending well beyond the bounds of
conventional medicine and psychiatry. Since his quasi-
operational participation in this case has been covered
to some degree in Chapter III, we need only reevoke a
few examples here:
--His judgment of 24 February 1966 that "things
are bound to change as far as Nosenko is con¬
cerned- -he is either going to stop faking or
things will get worse."
--His judgment, reported on 26 April 1966,
that reestablishing contact between Nosenko
and the interrogators would be a serious mis¬
take because it would constitute a "relief."
.--His opinion, offered after monitoring the
6 July 1966 meeting between the principal
case officer and Nosenko, that "the way in
which the interview was conducted would very
effectively slam shut another psychological
door."
Admittedly, the above comments come to us secondhand,
via memoranda written by others. Nonetheless, they are
consistent with everything in the psychiatrist's hand¬
written reports of his visits to Nosenko in confinement.
It will suffice here to illustrate our point with one
example, quoted from the psychiatrist’s 14 July 1964 re¬
port of a visit to Nosenko:
i
Subject was seen for [the] first time in over
two weeks. His general physical condition is
satisfactory and his weight is now 170 lbs.
There is evidence however that he is reacting
psychologically to his detention and is show¬
ing increased tension, anxiety and is misin¬
terpreting various stimuli in his environment.
More significant is his conviction that he is
being constantly photographed in his room and
in the "privacy of his bath." The latter is
most disturbing to him especially being
SECRET
i '1-00000
SECRET
-156-
photographed totally nude. He describes
hearing the sound of movie cameras especially
in the bath and was quite disturbed over
having pictures made without his "panties.’’
(This is the exact word he used.) I asked
how pictures were being taken in his room
and he got off the bed, walked over to the
door to his room and pointed to pin holes
on each side of the door through which he
was being clandestinely photographed. He
said he had taken photographs of people in
compromising positions for operational use
in [the] KGB and he understood the reason
for this. But he did not understand why
the guards continued to take pictures of
him--especially in the bath. . In the guard
log .is a notation last week about a request
from him that picture taking be stopped.
This sequence, I am convinced, was not
play acting. The nebulous situation he
finds himself in is beginning to take its
toll. From the psychiatric standpoint this
is viewed as first sign of disintegration
of personality and loss of contact with
reality. It may progress or it may remain
at this level. It is interesting that this
first indicator centers around his ’’privacy,"
being in the nude and is concerned with
sexual identification and his underlying
concern over this area. At this juncture
I do not recommend any changes in his manage ¬
ment [underlining is oursJ other than those
previously suggested, i.e., reading material,
writing material, chair and table in his
room. He has been given reading material and
I understand from [the principal case offi¬
cer] who is aware of the above visit, that
chair, table, and cigarettes in the room are
forthcoming in the next day or so.
Although the psychiatrist later changed his mind '
and expressed the conviction that Nosenko had been faking
his signs of psychological deterioration, the reasons
behind his assurance are not evident, at least to the
lay mind. There have been ample studies of the effects
of isolation and sensory deprivation on human beings,
triggered in large measure by the demands of the space
SECRET
] '1-00000
SECRET
-157-
program. They are only partially relevant to Nosenko's
situation, because no experimenter in the non-Communist
world has ever attempted to impose social isolation or
other forms of deprivation on experimental subjects for
more than a few days at a tinte. (The Soviets, who are
bound by fewer restrictions than we, have employed
durations of up to 60 days.) Nevertheless, while vari¬
ous researchers have obtained diverse results, there
is ample evidence that certain psychological, physiolog¬
ical, and behavioral impairments do indeed result from
severe restrictions being' placed on physical activity,
sensory stimulation, and social interaction; and this
generalization seems to apply to Soviets in much the
same way as it does to Americans. The psychiatrist's
judgments were not doubt based in good faith on his
clinical judgment, but the question remains as to
whether the latter was not distorted by his apparent
commitment to the cause of "breaking" Nosenko. Thus we
are led inevitably to the problem of whether such a
commitment is appropriate in the case of a doctor of
medicine.
C. Conclusions
The senior author of this study spent 1972 making
a study of Soviet agents-in-place. Two of the conclusions
of that study are worth requoting in part four years
later:
. . . We have not always used our Agency
psychiatrists and psychologists to best
advantage. When we deal with computers,
we know that we have to call on specialists
to help us, but we have a false self-confidence
in dealing with people. This Self-confidence
is allowable when we are dealing with people
who are normal, but unfortunately many Soviet
defectors and just about any Soviet who is
willing to serve as an agent-in-place are
not psychologically normal. They therefore
require very specialized handling . . .
. . . An operational death wish seemed to
overwhelm us, as we insisted on ascribing
every aberration of the agent(s) to some
sinister design of the enemy. Granted that
SECRET
14-00000
SECRET
-158-
we must always keep in mind the possibility
of an agent's being under opposition con¬
trol , as long as there is a change that he
is genuine we should never let him become
aware of our suspicions. We have missed
some major operational opportunities by
violating this rule.
In the Nosenko case, the problem lay not in our
failure to make use of the psychologists/psychiatrists
but in out gross misuse of them. CIA officials in
charge of the Nosenko case until 1967 sought assistance
of professionals from this field, as they did from
similar people in other fields, only to help shore up
certain conceptions.
For.their part, the psychologist/psychiatric
professionals were not of as much help as they could
have been. They had become accustomed over the
years to playing a subordinate support role to the
operators and had developed a "you call--we haul"
attitude that is inconsistent with the independent¬
mindedness legitimately to be expected of a professional.
In addition, because of the doctrine of compartmentation,
the knowledge that the Agency's psychological/psychiatric
professionals have had to contribute has, at any given
time, been much less than it could and should have been.
j
SECRET
1 '1-00000
SECRET
-177-
CHAPTER XI
Methodology and Leadership
A. Lack of Counterintelligence Methodology
We accept without question the necessity for counter¬
intelligence, as a category of the intelligence process
concerned with the activities of hostile powers * covert
and clandestine activities against the United States and
our allies. But such a discipline, if it is to fulfill
its purposes, must employ an orderly and systematic
methodology. Unhappily, in the Nosenko case it did no
such thing.
We are forced to conclude that, in the 1960s , when
Golitsyn* Nosenko, and _ . contacted CIA, the Plans
Directorate and its Clandestine Service were intellec¬
tually, technically, and procedurally unprepared to handle
them. A useful study entitled [ CIA] Counterintelligence
Interrogation was published by CfA in July 1963, but the
handling of Nosenko gives no indication that any of the
Agency personnel directly involved had profited from it,
if indeed they had read it at all. Insofar as we can
ascertain, in respect to Soviet nationals the Directorate
lacked:
1. Explicit written criteria to be applied
in evaluating the bona fides of a defector or
prospective agent.
2. Explicit written procedures for the
collection, analysis, and evaluation of the
counterintelligence product of a defector or
prospective agent. ; .
3. Explicit written procedures for psycho¬
logical evaluation of a defector or prospective
agent.
4. Any broadly-based systematic data base
(or systematic written procedures for employing
it, had it existed) regarding the relevant
psychological characteristics of Soviet agents.
There did exist some psychological data’regard¬
ing defectors , but they had not been collated
i '1-00000
SECRET
-178-
and analyzed, nor were they objectively
applied to the cases of Nosenko and Golitsyn.
The latter was himself never even tested.
B. Influence of Chief, Cl on Methodology
The predominant influence in the counterintelligence
field within the Agency until 1975 was the then Chief, Cl.
His reputation for expertise rested on his purportedly
unique knowledge of the KGB's worldwide covert political
role. In truth, no one could compete with him as an expert
on this subject. His analyses, based on fragmentary and
often inapplicable data, were more imaginative than
systematic and therefore neither easily comprehended nor
replicated by his interlocutors. But unlike the Emperor
and his imaginary clothes, Chief, Cl' s fantasies were never
vulnerable to objective examination, simply because he
surrounded such data as existed with a wall of secrecy.
His "facts" were available in full only to a minimum number
of trusted apostles; to the rest of the intelligence com¬
munity , both American and foreign, he doled them out
selectively--seldom in written form--to prove whatever
point he was trying to make at the time.
Chief, Cl’s preference for oral over written communica¬
tion is worth emphasizing. During his incumbency as its
chief, the Cl Staff, though it supposedly had in its
possession information concerning a horrendous hazard to
both the United States and its allies, never committed to
paper any complete, written, documented report on the sub-
ject. Therefore, the threat could never be systematically
analyzed and evaluated. Only when Chief, Cl finally departed
did dispassionate analysis of Cl Staff's data holdings
finally become possible, and these have consistently failed '
to support his central claims regarding the KGB’s massive
influence in world affairs.
C. Impact of Faulty Counterintelligence on Positive Intelli ¬
gence Collection .“
There is an important interrelationship between coun¬
terintelligence , as it was conducted in the 1960s, and the
collection of positive intelligence from human sources.
Only if this relationship is spelled out can the full im¬
pact of the events we have been describing be comprehended.
SECRET
14-00000
SECRET
-179-
At the time CIA was established, the primary mission
of what was later to become the Plans Directorate* s
Clandestine Service was conceived to be the collection
of strategically-significant intelligence from clandestine
human sources. How successful was the Clandestine Service
in fulfilling this mission?
Agency claims of success in the human-source col¬
lection field have often been so phrased, whether inten¬
tionally or not, as to give the impression that our
achievements stemmed largely from the process called
"development and recruitment." The impression that we
"recruited'* our best Soviet and Warsaw Pact sources fol- '
lowing a p.eriod of orderly development must be dispelled,
before there can be meaningful discussion of previously •
described deficiencies. In most major Soviet cases prior
to 1970, it might be more nearly correct to say that the
sources "developed" the Americans. In the case of
Penkovskiy, to cite an extreme example, US officials made
even the latter process so outrageously difficult for him
that he had to write a letter to both the Queen of
England and President Eisenhower in order finally to
achieve a clandestine working relationship with the British
and American intelligence services.
If our most significant positive intelligence and
much of our most significant counterintelligence from
human sources have come from Soviet or other Warsaw Pact
nationals who volunteered their services, why did we
fail to systematize their handling more fully? Even more
to the point within the framework of the present study,
why would we not give such persons the benefit of every
reasonable doubt rather than treat them with suspicion
and, in the cases of Nosenko and _ _ l. outright
inhumanity?
D. What Went Wrong ?
There are no easy or certain answers. Nonetheless,
a retrospective glance at the intellectual preparation of
those who led the Clandestine Service may shed light on
the problem and permit the formulation of constructive
recommendations for future action.
The leaders of the Clandestine Service in its first
quarter century were, for the most part, people who had
'1-00000
SECRET
- 180 -
emerged from World War II, oriented toward action rather
than contemplation. Chief, Cl was almost unique in his
interest in long-range analysis. Within the Clandestine
Service, his generation was in general suspicious of
theory and ill-prepared in most cases to cope with it.
On the other hand, the best of the Service * s leaders
- - and there were many good ones--were successful because
they possessed a difficult-to-define quality called com¬
mon sense. Its value should not be underestimated. For
example, when Penkovskiy was producing strategic intelli¬
gence that remains of value to this day, it was the com¬
mon sense of these other leaders that led them to resist
Chief, Cl's allegation that Penkovskiy was a "disinforma¬
tion agent."
Nevertheless, senior Clandestine Service supervisors
of the period 1948-1970 had seldom themselves been trained
in rigorous analytic techniques, and thus they seldom
were in a position to demand high standards of analysis
of their subordinates. Until the massive outflow of
retirees in recent years changed the demography of the
Service, most senior operational supervisors had received
their higher educations before systematized analysis be¬
came routine even in such "soft" subjects as political
science (for which a knowledge of inferential statistics
is now required at most universities) . Many, probably
most, of these same gentlemen were also educated during a
sort of interregnum in academe, when the study of classical
logic had passed from vogue but had not yet been replaced
by emphasis on scientific method. In the realm of
technology, almost all senior executives in the Clandestine
Service before 1970 had finished college before the first
digital computer, an invaluable analytical tool, became
commercially available about 1951.
There also have been, of course, a number of bright
spots. Some of the Plans Directorate's divisions and
staffs had subordinate components that specialized in sub¬
stantive intelligence and built up great expertise on
specific subjects over the years. From time to time
there were also bursts of enthusiasm for the use of
psychological evaluation techniques in the assessment
of prospective agents. But these cases were exceptions;
primary reliance within the Clandestine Service was on
judgments that, though sometimes bolstered by impressive
figures and arcane terminology, were nevertheless essentially
intuitive and non-systematic.
SECRET
SECRET
- 181 -
Such systems and criteria as did exist were
largely in the heads of various individuals, and there
is no evidence of any appreciable long- term consensus
among the latter. Every defector case tended to be
subject to the vagaries of the momentary line-up of
CIA leadership. The existence of an Interagency
Defector Committee, subordinate to the DDP, introduced
some uniformity of approach, but its concerns were
limited for the most part to superficial administrative
and procedural formalities.
Summary
If we seem to have wandered far afield from the
nature and validity of methodology of previous Nosenko
bona fid$s studies, we have done so because the unfortunate
handling of Nosenko was not an isolated event. Rather,
it was symptomatic of some fundamental inadequacies of the
Plans Directorate. What this means to us is that the
long-jieeded improvement in our conduct of counterintelli¬
gence activity, now well underway, must be carried on
within the framework of a searching reexamination of the
analytical techniques employed by the Directorate and its
Clandestine Service.
Whatever the course taken, however, we believe that
the last quarter of this century is going to be even more
exigent, though in a different way, than the past twenty-
five years. We therefore sum up the implications of this
chapter by posing a single question: How can we ensure
that the upcoming generation of Clandestine Service leaders
is better prepared intellectually to meet the challenges
that face them than were those who ran the Service in
the sixties?
SECRET
SECRET
-182-
CHAPTER XII
Conclusions and Recommendations
The Letter of Instructions
General guidance for the preparation of this report
was contained in a Letter of Instructions, signed by the
Deputy Director for Operations on 8 June 1976. It as¬
signed the following tasks:
You are tasked to write an analysis of the
Nosenko case which will address the following
matters:
[1] . The bona fides of Nosenko.
[2] . The value of Nosenko to
the United States and allied govern¬
ments .
[3] . The relationship and
significance of Nosenko to other
agents and operations.
[4] . The identification of unex¬
ploited Nosenko penetration leads and
information.
[5] . The nature and validity of
methodology of previous Nosenko bona
fides studies.
We have interpreted the above responsibilities rather
liberally, because the ramifications and implications of
the Nosenko case have proven more far-reaching than we,
and probably the framers of the above letter, anticipated.
Nonetheless, we shall commence this concluding chapter
with responses to the matters covered in sub-paragraphs
a. through e.
1. Bona Fides
Doubts regarding Nosenko * s bona fides were of
our own making. Had the job of initially assessing
him as a person, as well as of gathering and evaluating
the intelligence he had to offer, been handled
SECRET
i '1-00000
SECRET
-183-
properly, he could have been declared a bona fide
defector as readily as have many other Soviet in¬
telligence officers.
This is not to say that we can be certain of
the genuineness of any defector. It will always
remain hypothetically possible that the Soviet
government, acting through the KGB or some other
instrumentality, will attempt to plant an intended
"disinformation agent" or prospective penetration
of our government on our doorstep. But the useful¬
ness of the Soviets * doing so, in the manner as¬
cribed to them in the Nosenko case, is probably as
slight. as is the feasibility. Soviet success in
using native-born citizens of other countries to
spy on their own homelands has been considerable.
By contrast, there is no record of the USSR's suc-
cesfully infiltrating the government of a major
non-Communist power by use of an acknowledged
Soviet citizen, least of all one whose career has
been spent in a Soviet intelligence or security
service.
We therefore conclude that Nosenko was from
the beginning a bona fide defector.
2. Value of Nosenko
Nosenko's contribution has been summarized in
Chapter IV. He has been of great value, but he
probably could have been even more valuable had he
been properly handled.
3. Relationship to Other Agents and Operations
As was made clear in Chapters X and XI, the
Nosenko case, through no fault of the defector him¬
self, had a most unfortunate effect on all clandestine
operations in the Soviet field.
4. Identification of Unexploited Leads
We have not felt that this subj ect was one we
could feasibly or properly investigate. To do so
would have meant delving into the past and current
operations of both the SE Division and the Cl Staff
to ascertain the extent to which there might have
SECRET
SECRET
-184-
been "exploitation" of any of the hundreds of
persons whom Nosenko identified by name. Time
would not have permitted us to accomplish this
task, nor would our doing so have been consistent
with the principle of compartmentation.
5. Methodology
It has been made clear in Chapter XI that the
variety of techniques used in handling Nosenko did
not conform to any generally accepted sense of the
term "methodology."
Recommended Action
Most of our recommendations for action have been
previously stated or implied. In the following para¬
graphs , we recapitulate them, with such supplementary
remarks as seem necessary.
1. Examination of the Role of Professionals
We recommend that the role that can properly be
played within the Agency by members of the organized
professions--medicine, psychiatry, psychology, law,
and others--be given careful study, within the con¬
text of (a) ensuring that the Agency puts their skills
to the best possible use, and (b) refraining from in¬
volving them in matters not properly within their
professional purview.
2. Improvement of Intellectual Standards
We recommend that the Operations Directorate,
and its Clandestine Service, take whatever steps
are possible to ensure that the intellectual caliber
of their personnel is equal to the exigencies of the
future.
We realize that the present personnel selection
system sets high standards for those entering on
duty at the professional level, particularly as
regards IQ and education. But the standards presently
in force do not by themselves guarantee that future
selections will possess independence of mind, analytical
ability, and objectivity.
SECRET
1 '1-00000
SECRET
-185-
In the case of personnel already on board,
it should be kept in mind that we live in a
rapidly-evolving, technologically-oriented
civilization. Knowledge and intellectual
skills adequate at this time may be inadequate
a few years from now. For an intelligence or¬
ganization, we define "inadequate" as anything
that is less than the best.
We suggest that a board of expert consultants
be established, drawn primarily from research in¬
stitutions , high-technology enterprises, and the
academic world to recommend a program of screening
new entrants and improving the analytical skills
of those already on duty, with the aim of achiev¬
ing and.maintaining a high level of intellectual
excellence throughout the Operations Directorate.
3. Detection of Deception
We recommend that high priority be accorded a
program to develop new methods of detecting deception.
Some steps are already underway in this regard,
but they should be extended and given greater
emphasis. Present methods, based mainly on the use
of the polygraph, are clearly obsolete.
Specific criteria of bona fides will follow
naturally from improved methods of detecting deception.
4. Psychological Aspects of Defector/Agent Handling and
Personnel Selection " ~
We recommend a multi-track program of psychologi¬
cal research, geared specifically to the Operations
Directorate's needs, to develop a new generation of
personality assessment techniques necessary for both
defector/agent handling and selection of DDO person¬
nel . This program should be under direct DDO control.
A surprising amount of relevant expertise now
exists within the Agency, and some valuable research
is underway, but it is not being geared to DDO's
needs to the extent it could be. Instead, it is
being handled by another directorate, which currently
accords it a low priority.
SECRET
SECRET
- 186 -
It is theoretically possible to establish,
within the reasonably near future, certain
measurable physiological correlates of a number
of personality types.
It is aiso theoretically quite possible,
though not yet demonstrated, that by establishing
such physiological correlates we could take much
of the guesswork out of personality evaluation.
We would thus substantially reduce the threat that
the employment of unstable or anti-social personalities
poses for the Agency, and particularly for the
Operations Directorate.
Psychological Assessment of Agents and Defectors
We recommend early, systematic psychological
evaluation, by clinical psychologists using standardized
measurement techniques, of all denied area agents,
as well as defectors from the denied areas. We
recommend against dependence on psychiatric examina¬
tions , unless the psychiatrists are willing to use
the same standardized instruments as the psychologists
would.
Although few, if any, of the Soviet or Soviet
Bloc agents to whom we have had direct and continuing
access have ever been tested as long as they remained
in agent status, we do not accept as valid the reasons
usually given for not testing them.
Implementation of this recommendation would,
if the other programs above-recommended are also car¬
ried out, contribute substantially toward authentica¬
tion of agent sources and information.
SECRET
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Open Library
American Libraries
TV News
Understanding 9/11